Skin Contact
by claimedbydaryl
Summary: After Beth returns to the group, her and Daryl don't so much as begin to love one another but fall into it, like soul mates separated for a millennia finally reunited, and they learn each other's stories by reading the marks on their skin.
1. Be Good

Daryl and Beth come to the unspoken agreement to sleep naked.

They fall into the pattern sometime after Beth's—and Morgan's for a short time being—return to the group, and to Daryl. Their strange behaviour is noted by the people closest to the pair, how Daryl and Beth seem to dance around each other, seesawing between blindingly happy—on Beth's part—and a constantly irritated, if not dangerously close to affectionate side-eye—on Daryl's part. An undeniable connection bound the two together—cemented since the night they got piss-drunk on moonshine and burnt that shabby old cabin—and the shadow of it memories—to the ground.

Carol watches how Daryl's gaze tracks Beth's every move when he thinks she isn't watching, nervously chewing on the pad of his thumb out of habit. Maggie watches how her sister's hand lingers on Daryl's, or how she pokes him gently in the side after making a good-natured joke. They don't seem to touch out of necessity, more out of the simple need to feel the body of person that doesn't belong to them. And the whole group, even Rick—who is oblivious to almost anything that regards the _something there_ between his left-hand man and the girl who came back a woman—notices when Daryl hands Beth his crossbow with a grunt and motions her to track the path of the deer they're hunting, entrusting her with his beloved weapon and the chance to eat something rather than twigs and berries at dinner.

It is clear to them that after the prison fell something grew and took root, a tether winding the two broken and lost souls together. Because Beth is stronger in Daryl's presence—she is self-reliant and willing to hunt and fight, his knife strapped to her side like it was made for that exact purpose. And Daryl is somewhat softer in Beth's presence, speaking in words instead of nonchalant huffs of air and growls, even laying a dirty blanket over a corpse in some form of respect. He is considerate and somewhat kind, and she is determined and resourceful—words no one thought they would ever use to describe Daryl Dixon or Beth Greene.

They are good for each other, the two stronger as a unit rather than individuals, both in the physical and emotional sense.

Maggie confides in Beth one night and asks her what exactly is going on between her and Daryl Dixon. Carol does the same. She subtly mentions his change in character returning from a hunt, a catch of squirrels hanging on their shoulders, rigid carcasses banging against their sides with every stride.

Beth looks at Maggie in response, her heart shining in her eyes.

Daryl stares straight ahead, glancing fleetingly at Carol in obvious contemplation.

And they both confess their feelings, separately, their answers near identical.

Beth says: "I like him, Maggie. He saved me after Daddy died. He taught me how to hunt, how to survive the pain, the hurt, all of it."

And Daryl says: "I wasn' right in the head after the prison fell and she . . . she was the last lil' glimmer of hope in a dark, dark world."

Both their replies are quickly followed with the same admission: they're scared, scared of losing one another in a time and place where that sort of thing was commonplace.

Daryl is scared because the first woman he ever loved was Carol. She was the first feminine presence in his life that cared for him in the way his mother should've, reflecting her feelings from Sophia onto him. After the initial disbelief and shock of knowing there was a person who was concerned for his wellbeing, Daryl had reacted in the only way he knew how: by scaring them away. But Carol was able to see straight though him, and after Daryl's attempts to push her away failed he was finally able to accept her as a friend. There may have been a spark of something more at Hershel's farm, but whatever it was it remained dormant at the prison and then was fully extinguished in the time she spent with Tyreese and the girls. Carol was closed off to him, disconnected to all, choosing to tread a darker path and refusing to wipe her sins clean. And Daryl had never loved her as he wanted to love Beth, by touch and kiss and professions of feelings. That wasn't him, but he wants to be something like that—_he was tryin', he was_—for Beth. Only he had no idea how to be that man.

The old, dirty redneck is also scared of what would happen if they were together and he lost her—to the walkers or disease or whatever darkness had consumed Carol. He didn't even want to entertain the idea of her falling pregnant, but the prospect of being the father of Beth's child filled with him a longing and fear that he didn't even want to begin to understand. And Daryl is also scared of rejection and ruining whatever he had built with Beth—losing the one light that waited for him at the end of the long, dark tunnel of his life.

And Beth's old fears had returned to her, and she is scared loving someone liked she had loved her parents, Otis, Patricia, and Shawn, and then having to enduring losing them. After her time spent in that hospital she was forged into someone strong and resilient, but she had known Daryl when she was weak. When she cried at the sight of people ripped apart at the side of the railroad. When she sat down with a bottle of peach schnapps. When he had fallen to pieces in her arms. Sharing that type of intimacy—of a lover, the closest possible connection to another person—with a man who risked danger on a daily basis, it terrified her. There was a high possibility he would walk out on fine Georgia morning and never come back, the teeth of a walker caught on his raw, red flesh, or struck down by a bullet, anything—even a rusty nail could do the job.

But love is a great and terrible thing, and Beth Greene wants to love Daryl Dixon. She wants to break his hardened exterior and find the child beneath; the one who had borne the brunt of his family's abuse. She wanted to save him, to grip his hand in hers and _pull_. But once she did, Beth wants to hold him close and keep him—and that was near damn impossible in this hopeless, desperate shell of a world of what once was. Loving Daryl would be a trail in itself, but getting to that place where he was comfortable under her gentle touch, or he would believe that she loved him when she said so, would be worth the pain and hardship and fear. All of it.

So Maggie takes her sister's hand and smiles. "Beth?" Her name was soft and innocent, a combination of words that didn't seem to apply to her anymore, save for this situation.

"Hmm?" She is somewhere else, at a funeral home where the taste of grape jelly and Frosty Cola clings to her tongue and the only word she can say was a shocked, quiet _oh_.

"Daryl ain't going anywhere."

And Carol stops in her tracks, and so does Daryl, regarding her curiously through squinted eyes. "What're ya doin'?" he asks her, failing again to maintain a veneer of disinterest, like her words didn't have an effect on what he did or didn't do.

"Do you like Beth?" There's a touch of sadness to her features, but she isn't blind to how well Daryl and Beth fit together, like two halves of a broken whole. Just because she didn't believe people were able to saved anymore didn't make it was true.

He shifts on his feet like a skittish horse; his gaze sliding to an unseen point in the distance.

"Daryl?" Carol probes, the smile evident in her voice.

He can't keep shit from Carol, especially when he's trying to hide it—and he kinda hates her for that. "I do," Daryl says, the words catching in his throat and he can hear his old man cackling in the back of his head—_ya whipped, boy. Ya know that?_ He nods jerkily in affirmation, shaking his head slightly to dispel the inner voice.

"Then what's stopping you?" And Daryl finally looks at Carol.

Then he strides forward, uncomfortable and awkward as he mumbles at Carol for playing a matchmaker. Daryl nudges her in the shoulder absently, the edge of his mouth curled into a crooked smile that is reserved for thoughts of Beth alone—her bright, sparkling laugh, or the shine of her blonde hair in the early morning sunlight. It is in this moment Carol realizes Daryl would die for Beth, all so she could live on in happy existence, even if that didn't include him.

Later, the group congregate around a campfire in the middle of the woods, the perimeter ringed with strings of cans and other spare items that would alert the presence of an oncoming walker. Judith is situated in Rick's lap, gurgling in delight as he bounces her. Carl leans over to grasp his sister's small hand in a gentle hold, cooing her name. Maggie rests her head on Glenn's shoulder, their wedding rings glinting like a beacon. Carol and Tyreese talk in low, serious tones as they always do. Michonne is located close by, staring into the hypnotic dance of the fire between intermittent glances at the surrounding darkness. Sasha is playing with the frayed edges of Bob's jacket. Noah is sitting cross-legged, a pleased expression on his face. The others are there too—Abraham, Rosita, Eugene, Tara—relaxed and sharing a bottle of prized whiskey amongst the circle, reclining on backpacks and logs and recently scavenged sleeping bags—honest-to-God sleeping bags.

And, somehow, Beth and Daryl end up sitting beside one another. Her knee is pressed into the side of his legs, which are drawn up close to his chest and his arms looped over them. Beth grins and laughs and bends her head close to Daryl when she speaks, like they're sharing a secret. He cannot help but smile when she giggles at her recount of Glenn tripping over a mop during a supply run today—it's infectious, her mirth. But Daryl is tense when she lays a hand on his exposed bicep to throw her head back to laugh, loud and bright. The little touches between them are damn near invisible to the untrained eye, but the intention behind the shared contact is massive, monumental. Because Daryl hates being touched or being told he matters or the general expression of feelings, but when it came to Beth all bets were off.

Daryl almost reaches out to place his hand on the small of her back when Beth coughs on a mouthful of whiskey, burning down her throat, but he knows the action would set all sorts of things in motion—things he hadn't the slightest idea of how to handle. He thinks back to the night they spent in a moonshine-induced haze, playing that stupid game and trading sips of stuff that would curl the hair of the dog. Scratching his forehead with two fingers, Daryl reminds her of the night it in a soft, playful murmur right in her ear without even thinking. A shiver runs through Beth at the sound his gravelly voice, so close to her she can feel his breath on the naked skin of her neck. Her actions don't escape Daryl and he leans back a little too fast and a little too sudden, coughing and looking away as if his attention were focused anywhere but Beth.

Beth passes him the bottle and he takes a long, deep draft of the golden liquid, refusing to meet a pair of bright blue eyes boring into the side of his skull, still so damn close to him.

No one can remember who asked Beth to sing, maybe it was Glenn at Maggie's urging or Rick in an attempt to soothe Judith's fussing, but someone asked, so Beth sang. The group quiets as she begins, the words transcending the motley crew of tanned, dirty, world-weary people in her presence, rolling off her tongue in a sweet, high melody. Daryl listens in earnest, knowing Beth's voice was a gift—something he thought he would never hear again once—but the song triggers a memory locked deep in his subconscious. It was the same song Beth had sung back at the funeral home, at the piano, when he watched her silently from the doorway as if she was some precious creature he would frighten away if she knew he was there.

Daryl's head snaps up at the realization, but the rest of his body is still rooted to the spot, heavy. His actions go unnoticed by Carol and Maggie, even to the all-seeing Michonne, because they're all attuned Beth—to the sweet lull of her voice, to the song she is singing for him, _to him_.

She finished, the song wavering at the end as her shyness takes hold. Not a soul claps or cheers, or does what a normal audience would do, but Beth's performance is met with a murmur of humble appreciation amongst the group. Beth looks to Daryl for his reaction, but her exuberance is dimmed at his shocked, and somewhat horrified, expression.

"What?" she asks, her expression worried as she leans close. "I thought you'd like it."

"I did," he replies in a rush, unable gain control of the powerful, terrifying emotions that threaten to overwhelm him. "I do—" He stops and tries it again: "I did. I did really like it, Beth."

She blinks at his use of her name instead of the usual "Greene". Beth's face is a mirror image of that moment—when she realized that she was the reason. That she was the reason he changed his mind in believing there were still being good people left in the world. That life wasn't meant for hate and anger and darkness.

"Daryl—" she begins tentatively.

"Rick," Daryl blurts out, latching onto the thought of talking to anyone—looking anywhere—that wasn't Beth. "What we goin' do 'bout that ole construction site fulla walkers just outside a' town?"

Rick was caught by surprise at the Daryl's sudden interest in a topic they had discussed no less than three hours ago—they had agreed to take the long way around and clear out one of those big suburban homes. Have a real place to sleep for the night. Four walls and a roof, the whole damn shebang. But Rick took the time to answer his friend's query in detail, and the many ones that followed, almost like Daryl was trying to make conversation or something else just as ridiculous.

Daryl's legs shift away from Beth, cold air replacing his warmth. She was hurt and embarrassed by his obvious dismissal—the way he could be so ignorant of normal social cues—and she meets Maggie's gaze across the fire. Her sister smiles at her, inclining her head towards Daryl in question, her mouth curling ruefully. Beth shrugs, never having felt so ignored since the fall of the prison, so insignificant and childish in Daryl's presence. Maggie purses her lips in obvious deliberation as she stares at Daryl, and soon Glenn notices the unspoken conversation between his wife and sister-in-law. He catches their attention before pausing dramatically, and then proceeding to run his hands along his sides, making exaggerated kissy faces. Maggie shoves him in the shoulder good-naturedly and Beth smothers a giggle behind a cupped hand. She's always been jealous of Maggie and Glenn, how they seemed to work on the same wavelength. She knows Maggie loves her, but she loves Glenn more, and she'd do—and has done—more to find him once lost. Then, Beth's gaze slides from her sister to find Carol's, who is staring at her with a faint smile over the fire.

Before Beth can dare to speak Carol stands, dusting the leaves off her pants. "Okay, guys," she announces, "it's been a rough day and I'm about due to hit the hay." She departs the campfire with a wave, returning the calls of goodnight.

Maggie stares after Carol and something just _clicks_, like she had just discovered the meaning of life. "I'm with Carol. 'Night, y'all." She takes hold of Glenn's arm and pulls him up with her, retreating to their shared sleeping bag.

Beth watches as the others follow suit, Carol having spurred a chain of bleary-eyed and yawning individuals stumbling to bed, the group slowly diminishing in size. Abraham is the last to leave, handing the near-empty bottle of whiskey to Daryl before bidding them a gruff goodnight.

Silence lapses for a moment, only the sound of rustling sleeping bags, clothes, and the distant death groans of walkers filling the cool night air. Daryl chews absently on the pad of his thumb between intermittent sips of whiskey, his knee bobbing, fingers twitching—needing to move.

"Daryl," Beth starts, forcing herself to look at him until he reacted. "Daryl . . ." she finds her strength, she finds that will of iron that has kept her alive, "that song was for you. I sung it for you, like I did at the funeral home."

Daryl tips the bottle to his lips and realizes it's bone dry—has been for a long time—before tossing it aside. He doesn't speak for so long Beth thinks he never will, but then he lets loose a deep, tired sigh. He gives her a lingering sidelong glance through unkempt strands of dark hair, eyes hidden in the gloom of the dark, brows drawn together.

"Ya didn' have ta sing. Ya don' own me jack, Greene."

"But I want too."

He remains quiet, the fire casting obscure shadows across their faces—the only source of movement as the two don't dare to even breathe. The scene seems frozen in time as the two stare at each other; the hunter and the angel, who would never have crossed paths if they weren't thrust together alone and angry and desperate in a cruel trick of fate.

Daryl's chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm, air escaping through his nose in a soft wheeze. Although he tries to relax the muscles in his arms he can't bely the rigid way he holds himself, hands resting over his bent knees like a bar of solid steel. Daryl stares at Beth without showing the intention of ever stopping, eyes trained on the stray tendril of hair that has escaped her ponytail, tickling the pale skin of her cheek.

Beth sits with her own hands resting in her lap, looking back at him openly, her heart in her eyes. Being the object of Daryl Dixon's scrutiny was enough to force a grown man to avert his gaze and shift uneasily on his feet, but the younger Greene sister wasn't fazed. Because it was Daryl—the one she had shared her first drink with, the one who had peeled back his armour and bared his weakness and pain to her, the one who had taught her to be strong and fight for herself—and she wasn't scared of him.

When Daryl all but falls forward into the blue depths of her gaze—unblinking and too bright to be real—he knows—_he knows_—that Beth would never be afraid of him in the way he was afraid of himself.

He coughs, finally able to extract himself from the magnetic pull of Beth, pointedly ignoring the tentative hope that glimmered in her old-soul eyes. Her hands twitch and reach for him on instinct, the action stopping short halfway to his arm. He can't look at her; because the moment does he would be lost. Instead, Daryl rolls onto his feet and stands up, mumbling something about going to check the perimeter for walkers. But as he leans down to hook the strap of his crossbow on his outstretched fingers he hears leaves and twigs crunch underfoot. A whisper of fabric, a huff of air advancing, and then—

—Beth's hugging Daryl; flush against his back, arms locking around his midsection in a vice-like grip, and face pressing to the leather of his shoulder. Again, for the third time if he counts correctly, she's close to him—closer than Carol or even Merle had been in his final days.

"Greene, what're ya doin'?" To anyone else it would've seemed like Daryl was warning her, his tone low, gravelly and dangerous, but Beth knows how to read him—she understands him.

In her arms Daryl is reduced to a jumble of nerves—one wrong move would send him running to the hills; one word would undo him completely. It is his knee-jerk reaction to intimacy; Beth would do something he had yet to experience and cause a swell of emotion to lodge high in Daryl's chest and he'd do the only thing he knows how: he'd run. The younger Dixon brother would withdraw inside himself and refuse to accept his feelings or the meaning behind it, spinning Beth on her ass. It was almost like they were back at square one, stuck in a sucky two-person camp, chewing on the half-charred flesh of a snake, the tough, ropey meat caught between her teeth.

"Daryl, it was you," Beth says against his back, the words muffled around the leather at her lips, the coarse pattern of the angel wings pressing to the side of her face.

He can't move, can't speak, can't damn well breathe.

"You changed _my _mind," she explains, sounding more like the naïve, soft-spoken girl than she had in a long time. "When I was in that hospital it was your voice I heard, telling me to keep going and survive." She hadn't talked about her time in Atlanta yet, not even to Maggie. "When I fell you told me to get up. When I was hurt you told me to ignore the pain. When I thought I couldn't go on you told me the world wasn't meant for the weak." Beth changes the angle of her head, resting her chin on the flat of Daryl's shoulder blade to watch his reaction. "_You_ changed my mind. _You_ made me stronger. _You_ kept me alive. No one else, just you Daryl Dixon."

Daryl's face tilts to the side so he can catch a glimpse of her profile behind him—the soft curve of her cheek, the glow of her hair—so close, so goddamned close. He worries the skin of his bottom lip between his teeth, trying to make sense of his jumbled thoughts, so different to the erratic thumping of his heart. _She should feel it_, Daryl thinks, _right there_, _beating under her palms_. There's no way she can't.

"You," he near whispers, the confession slipping past his tongue before he can curb the errant word.

She waits, squeezing him lightly in reassurance, making it known that she's there and it's okay.

_It's okay._

"The funeral home." Daryl can't stop it now, he's in too deep, and she feels so good wrapped around him. "When we were sittin' a' the table. I said—" He mumbles, his limited conversational skills failing him once again. "I was tryin' ta say that . . ." He grasps for words, unexperienced and floundering, but this woman has seen him cry before. She's seen him drive an iron into the face of a walker, over and over until its malleable skull, splattering her in blood. He'd let her use his crossbow and hold his hand and gave her a serious piggyback ride. This . . . This was nothing.

"I was tryin' ta say that you were the reason I changed my mind."

And then it's done—he's said it. Spoken aloud, the full force of his words hit him in the stomach, twisting his insides something new and awful. It felt both good and painful, but mostly it scares the living daylights out of Daryl, because now he had to face Beth. To gauge her reaction, the undeniable snarl or disgust or contempt at the dirty old redneck fawning all over her.

She tugs at the folds of his vest, pulling him around in her embrace, bracing her chest against his. If the feel of her pressed to him affected him before it damn well drives him insane now, his pants tightening. But he's trapped and there's not a damn thing he can do about it. Daryl waits for the inevitable rejection—that confused expression crossing Beth's pretty face, erasing her teasing smile away as she utters a soft _oh_.

But, instead, her hands catch and hold onto the lapels of his vest, keeping him near. Daryl is practically humming with tension, needing—his mind practically screaming at him—to rip from her grip, but he stays. He stays because he just told Beth Greene she had a bigger impact on him than anyone else ever had and she's looking at him and she's smiling.

She's smiling at him like he just gave her the whole damn world on a plate.

Her hands travel up his chest, running across his grimy, dirty neck and scraping the scruff of his beard—now flecked with grey and rough—and then sliding along his cheek. She memorises the planes and angles of his face by touch, unable to believe Daryl Dixon is standing there and letting her do that. Her thumbs gently trace a line under his eyes, the effect almost medicinal on the tired ache of exhaustion and malnutrition that had taken root deep in his bones. Daryl can't even think of stopping her soothing ministrations—doesn't even know why he would ever try to avoid this.

He doesn't realize his hands are on her hips until he digs her fingers into her flesh, overcome with the nicest, most unusual, most painful feeling. It courses through him, not lust but something akin to it, a gentle and affectionate emotion settling in his chest. They're even closer now, no space left to occupy between them, and Daryl notes how lithe and soft she is against him. Beth does the same, admiring the strong, lean lines of his profile. She's smiling, her happiness bubbling up inside her and spilling out, practically shining.

They fit together, and it's a damn near magical experience.

And then Beth rises up on her tiptoes at the same time Daryl's face dips down towards her, and their lips—finally—meet.


	2. Darlin

At first it is a searching and chaste kiss, both of them unpractised in one another. Close-mouthed, no more than a press of chapped skin against skin, but it is warm and gentle. Daryl had spent a few alcohol-infused nights with women, buzzed and unable to remember much when the grey light of morning rolled around but a few fragments of detached memory. And Beth had had boyfriends before, Jimmy at Hershel's farm and Zach at the prison.

But this is different on both parts.

Because it is Daryl Dixon—with angel wings stitched onto his back and a crossbow held at his side, the noblest redneck in Georgia.

And it is Beth Greene—a girl who had lost everyone she knew but her sister, her world gone in a heartbeat, and somehow, alone and weak and bleeding, she had managed to survive.

Daryl surges forward, Beth bending backwards as he traps her in his arms, his tongue in her mouth. Daryl Dixon's tongue is _in her mouth_. For a moment Beth is stunned, and Daryl takes her hesitation for uncertainty and begins to pull back. But, as always, Beth catches him. She wraps her arms around his neck, responding to his demanding kiss in kind—wet and sloppy and glorious. Their breathing quickens with desire, the sensation of heat flooding their senses. The weight of their bodies is comforting, and Beth and Daryl cannot deny how right they feel slotted together.

Suddenly, Beth giggles against Daryl's open mouth. He breaks the kiss, the expression on his face scared and almost vulnerable, causing the noise to die in her throat.

"What is it?" he breathes.

She stares at him, so un-Daryl with swollen lips and mussed dark hair, panting in something other than adrenaline. At her shocked, wordless reaction Beth can already feel him extracting from her grip, convincing himself that she doesn't want this, doesn't want _him_.

"No, no, no," she says, rushing to rectify the situation. Beth grabs onto him, fisting his vest and shirt, and she _holds_. "It's not like that."

"Then what?" he demands, withdrawing into the hard, cynical shell of the man he once was.

"It's this." Beth makes sure to smile, putting everything she has into it—all the love and hope and general goodness. "It's you." She leans close to him, tipping her head up so all Daryl has to do is edge forward and down to capture her lips. "It's us."

At the way he looks down his nose at her she's almost worried Daryl'll reject her and turn away. He's trying to gauge the truth in her words, in her actions, mulling it over in his head. Beth grins up at him, looking past that long, shaggy hair that hangs over his forehead and—

"Blue eyes," she whispers, marvelling at the discovery.

"What?" His tone is sharp, but he's still wrapped around her.

"You have blue eyes." Beth shortens the distance between them to get a better look. She can hardly believe she never noticed it before, maybe because he seemed to be squinting half the damn time, hidden behind a curtain of hair and scowling far too often for anyone to get close. His eyes are a dark blue, a tired grey-like colour that doesn't merit anything particularly spectacular, but the fact remained that it belongs to Daryl Dixon. And he is beautiful.

Almost like he had heard her, a corner of Daryl's curls into something that could've been a grin in a different time and place, but it's an imperceptible sign of emotion—one Beth can read like she was born to. Because he was happy, even humoured, and those horrible, self-deprecating doubts that had taken hold of him momentarily vanished in lieu of something good.

Beth slides her hand up the side of his head, fingers curling in the hair above his ear, and Daryl's hand rises from their place hanging at his sides to cradle Beth's smooth, youthful face. He can't believe it's him she's smiling at—a dirty old redneck twice her age with enough emotional baggage that it made him suited to this godless world. Beth Greene was a vision of purity and innocence and under his grimy, cruel fingers Daryl thought he would only tarnish her—ruin her. But he had long since discovered appearances were misleading, because Daryl could be compassionate as easily as Beth could be aloof.

And, in some warped, twisted sense that made them all the more compatible.

Their hands tighten, pulling each other close until their foreheads are touching. They move as if they don't need to speak, breathing the same air as if touch and expression were all Beth and Daryl need to understand each other.

Daryl feels Beth smile against his lips, and he can't help but do the same.

They stand there, framed in the orange light of the fire, caught up in the taste and smell and feel of each other. And, for once, they are able to find something that is good and real and whole, and they are able to keep it.

After that night Daryl and Beth are considered as a pair—a couple, a partnership. A few eyebrows are raised the first time the younger Greene sister reaches to take the redneck's hand on a run, and when Daryl entwines his fingers with her own half the group are a picture of confusion. It takes some—like Rick and Carl—longer to understand the existence of a relationship between two such different people, but the rules and accepted norms of a forgone society are blurred. Age and beauty are rendered obsolete in a world that is based on survival, and those who are left are stripped to their most basic human nature.

Beth and Daryl are private, modest people, and their public displays of affection are few and far between. Touches—a hand cupping an elbow, or the graze of knuckles along the smooth column of a neck—are enough to convey their true feelings. Signs—meaningful looks, the gentle curve of a smile, the absence of space between their bodies and the way Daryl calls Beth _darlin'_—were dead giveaways to the bond that wound the two together. They kiss rarely, even withholding from a peck on the lips before one or the other left for a supply run or something else just as dangerous, but when they did they treat it like their last—fast and furious and insistent.

They can be seen in the faint glow of morning, or the dim of night, sneaking a few moments to find each other and feel the steady beat of another pulse on their skin. Those small, wonderful moments were enough to breathe life into them, fuelling them with hope and a new outlook on the future. Because there was a future when they were together, it was possible and real and tangible.

One night Rick announced to the group that he, Daryl, Carl, Michonne, Glenn, Tyreese and Tara are heading out at morning light tomorrow on a supply run. The group hardly ventured into town; it was just too dangerous, overrun with walkers. The general store they'd picked clean had been close shave, even with the most experienced of the lot. Glenn had almost got bit when he was knocked out, Tyreese had frozen up at the sight of a little blonde walker, and Daryl . . . His knife had been knocked from Beth's hand, and he was running low on arrows as he watched four walkers corner her in the back. Armed with a broomstick she snapped in half on her knee and positioned in a fighting stance—feet a shoulder-width apart and knees bent—she was ready to survive.

But she didn't need Daryl, she could take of herself.

He'd been facing three of his own walkers, unable to do a damn thing but watch Beth fight for her life. She'd hit the first walker hard with her broken broomstick, striking down over its head, deterring it for a second to advance onto the next. It was the most deformed of the four, big and slow, so Beth grabbed hold of a nearby shelving rack and pushed it over. It collapsed onto the walker, pinning it dead to the ground. The first was back, the skin of its head peeled back to reveal a dented skull. She saw an opportunity and took it, aiming the jagged wooden end of her broomstick for the walker's exposed brain. Beth drove it home, adrenaline and fear and exhilaration coursing through her. The third walker—no more than a crawling torso with stumps for legs—had time to sidle up behind Beth, grabbing and snapping at the flesh of her ankles. Daryl caught a flash of her—hair flying, pulling the broomstick from the walker's head and whirling around in a deadly semi-circle, moving with the skill and grace of a warrior—before Beth raised her foot and stomped the walker's head into the ground.

Daryl had no trouble dispersing his own three walkers. He hit the underside of the closest walker's chin with his crossbow, sending its jawbone flying before kicking him square in the chest, smacking its head open against the wall. He'd done the same thing to another, impaling it on exposed steel racks. Daryl swiped his foot under the third walker's legs, and it had toppled to the ground. Raising his crossbow, Daryl had thrust the strong curve of his weapon down onto its neck and _pushed_ with all his weight, attempting to sever the walker's head from its body.

Daryl couldn't look anywhere but at Beth, trained on her every movement as his heart pounded at his ribs and his throat ran dry, fear coursing through him—not for him, but for her.

A walker was lumbering towards Beth, its left foot dragging on the grimy linoleum floor, mouth agape in a loud death groan. The walker gripped the thin fabric of her shoulder, advancing for the sweet flesh of her exposed neck. Beth screamed, reacting on instinct. She'd swung the broomstick 'round, making contact with the walker's head. It was undeterred, still reaching for her. Beth reached back; the broomstick poised above, and let loose a war cry as she plunged the broken end of her weapon into the walker's forehead. The meat and bone and brain pooled around the wound and dark, repulsive sludge slid down its deformed, ruined face.

Daryl shouted Beth's name, but the deed was already done—she could save herself.

The younger Dixon brother was at her side in an instant. She watches, transfixed, as the walker collapsed against the wall, dead. Daryl reaches forward to touch her but she flinches, and his hands reluctantly dropping to his sides. He will never be able to erase the memory of her beautiful blue eyes wide with terror, burning into him. Pain, fierce and powerful, grips his heart as he thinks that she—Beth, his other half in all matters of life—could've died a few feet from him.

She could've slipped through his fingers like granules of sand, gone and forever unattainable to him.

And then Daryl's crossbow is cluttering to the ground, forgotten as he takes Beth's face in his hands and presses their foreheads together in a long ago echo of their first kiss, illuminated in the dim orange light of the campfire.

"Ya okay, darlin'?" he asks in a strained, husky voice, his lungs unable to take in all the air he needs and Daryl can't breathe, _he can't goddamned fuckin' breathe_.

He doesn't leave Beth's side for the rest of the day, even after she assures him that she's fine, that she wasn't bit and that it was okay. But Daryl wasn't taking no for an answer. He walks out of the general store right then and there, only stopping to strap his crossbow across his chest, taking Beth with him. Outside, on the curb of the sidewalk he pulls her close, kissing the top of her head. For once, he's not self-conscious or awkward because he needs—in a way a drowning man needs air—to touch Beth, to make sure she's still there. And she starts to shake in his embrace, racked by small, pitiful sobs that causes Daryl jaw to clench tight as the gravity of the situation finally settles over them.

"I could have lost you," she whispers into his chest. "You could have died."

Daryl shakes his head like a dog in the rain, because the possibility of losing her is unthinkable. Because he wouldn't just lose her, he'd lose himself too. He's compelled to pull away at the surge of emotion within him, at the intensity of his feelings, and fall into his former pattern of laconic, detached behaviour to avoid all this shit piling up—to avoid Beth. But he can't sever that part of him now – because that part belongs to Beth, who carved out a place for herself inside his heart and she ain't ever leaving.

Rick and Co. filed out from the general store a few seconds later, battered and bruised, covered in slime and grit and blood. But is not until after Daryl fixed Rick with a hard, unforgivable glare that the sheriff stops dead in his tracks. With his blood-dark hands on his hips, Rick decides to abandon all pretences of broaching an argument with Daryl or Beth for leaving in their time of need. Because he's seen that look before, he's had that look before—after someone had threatened to hurt Carl or Judith—when white-hot rage boils up inside him and he feels like he could take on the goddamn world if need be. Rick knows that Daryl would die in that moment if he believed it would keep Beth alive.

"Go back to camp," Rick orders. He wipes his sweaty brow with the same hand that gripped his cleaver, the length of his arm—reaching up to his elbow—smeared in blood. "We'll be able to handle it from here. You two may as well head back."

Ricks dancing around the subject and any other time Daryl would've called him out on it, but right now he. Does. Not. Care. All he wants to do is comfort Beth and she's shivering in his arms and he doesn't think he can hold her together. Daryl nods at the sheriff in unspoken gratitude, their minds working on the same wavelength, before guiding Beth back to the campsite. Beth is quiet all the way there, reverting back to her original state of mouse-like shyness, enough so that Daryl resorts to murmuring promises they both know he can't keep. It was a stupid thing to do because she soon tells him to stop, that hollow words and broken promises don't mean a damn thing to her or him—never have. Daryl feels his heart breaks a little at hearing the flat tone of her voice as she says it, but he was glad to stop pretending. Because that's not him and that's not her.

Maggie smiles at the pair as they approach camp, but Daryl's slight shake of the head sends her rushing over. "Beth? Beth, are you okay?" She touches her sister's hair, brushing it from her face tenderly. "Beth, honey, talk to me." The younger Greene sister remains silent, clinging to Daryl like he's an anchor in a storm, and it's enough to tip him over the edge.

"Maggie," Daryl warns lowly, "she ain't up to it. Leave her be."

She pins him with a fierce glare, something both girls had inherited from their father. "With all due respect _Daryl_"—she practically sneers his name—"I think I know my sister better than you ever will, so don't go sayin'—"

"Maggie?" Beth sounds like a lost, little girl, her blonde head rising from his chest.

"Yeah, Bethy?"

"I just wanna be alone right now. With Daryl."

Maggie is taken back by her sister's words, a muscle working furiously in her jaw, but it doesn't take her long to relent. "Okay, okay," she offers Beth a tenuous smile, "whatever you say. I'll be here when you need me." Daryl thinks Maggies putting on a show for Beth. That she really doesn't like him taking her place as Beth's confidant, but she could see her sister wasn't in for an argument right now.

Beth nods mutely in response, and then she's moving on her own accord, floating past everyone like she can't see them, like they're not really there. Daryl can't offer Maggie much but a fleeting touch to her shoulder before following Beth. She's already at his sleeping bag—not hers, but his—which stops him dead in his tracks. Their relationship—he almost snorts at the word—hasn't progressed to that point yet. But then she's slipping her cowboy boots off, removing her bloodstained jeans and flannel shirt in quick succession, like she can't get them off fast enough. Beth strips down to her panties and a tight singlet before burrowing deep inside his sleeping bag. Daryl does the only thing he can and sits at the edge of the blankets, resting his crossbow against a nearby tree. He waits for a moment, mulling over what he's about to do, a blush of red creeping up the side of his neck, even under the layer of dirt and tan. Slowly, he takes his boots and vest off, feeling compelled to crawl in beside Beth but worried she'll take it the wrong way and turn from him too.

"Daryl?" she whispers, stretching her hand out from under the mass of blankets and hair.

He does the only thing he can and takes it, holding on tight as he slides in beside her.

Beth guides his arm around her slim waist, their conjoined hands resting high on her sternum. Daryl can feel the curve of her breasts pressed to his forearm and tries to ignore it. He lies down, maintaining an appropriate space between them, not wanting to crowd her, but his attempts are futile. Beth had always been the one to close the distance between in previous circumstances, whether it was threading their fingers together or gripping a handful of his hair to pull his head down into a kiss. So it was inevitable that she would shuffle backwards into Daryl's front, tightening her hold on him.

"Darlin'?" Daryl starts, hoping the muffled quality of his voice would mask the question in his tone—his uncertainty and inexperience in these types of situations.

"S'okay," she says quietly. "Just don't let me go."

He nods jerkily, which results in his nose bumping against the back of her skull awkwardly.

Softly, so soft Daryl almost thinks he imagined it, Beth laughs. The younger Dixon brother smiles weakly at the sound, his lips pressed to her hair, moulding into the shape of her lithe body. That's all it took—that laugh, even though it lasted for the smallest fragment of time—for him to believe that they would be all right, that they would make it—because Beth Greene could still find a way to laugh.

Daryl stays with her until Rick and the others comes back, half-listening to snippets of conversation about the hoard of food they'd scavenged—saltine crackers, SPAM, baked beans, tins of tuna, jam, canned spaghetti and tomatoes and peaches, even blackberry pudding. The group's happiness—which is a quiet, sombre emotion nowadays—is repressed in respect for Beth and Daryl, who are curled around each other at the edge of camp, silent but awake.

When the sun slips below the horizon, the sky turning from blue to orange to black, Daryl hears a set of approaching footsteps. He whirls around in a heartbeat, releasing his vice-like grip around Beth to reach for his crossbow. Instead, the tension in his shoulders eases at the sight of Maggie, standing a few feet away. She's watching them, her delicate brow creased. Daryl lays his crossbow back down and glances at Beth—she's asleep, thankfully. He doesn't let himself stare at her—at how beautiful she is, sleep erasing the fear and worry from her luminous face.

"What'sa matter?" he asks quietly.

Maggie seemed to shake off whatever feeling had overcome her and crouches down beside him. "Here, I got Beth some food. Has she eaten at all?" She holds out a few saltine crackers slathered in jam and Daryl doesn't hesitate to accept the offer. Her innate sense to protect is evident—her voice is thick with concern—and it pulled on something inside Daryl's chest, his muscles straining. After his Daddy had wrapped a belt across his knuckles, or raised a closed fist to Daryl, Merle had never done what Maggie did—he had never spoken to him in quiet, soothing tones, or taken much care to see if he ate and slept.

"She's jus' fallen asleep. I don' wanna wake her up." Daryl mumbles, chewing absently on a corner of a cracker. The jam is tart and somewhat bitter in his mouth, and the cracker is dry and tasteless, but he needs something in his gut that isn't a roiling mass of worry.

Maggie nods in response, her gaze sweeping over Beth briefly. She stands, on the cusp of saying something she wouldn't normally say before thinking the better of it. Maggie won't admit it, but she was hurt when her sister had turned to the crossbow-toting redneck she'd hardly knew instead of her. But then she feels ashamed. Because she would've done the exact same in her situation, if the choice was between Glenn and Beth, and that makes the thought of her baby sister sleeping with Daryl Dixon a little easier to digest.

"Daryl?" Maggie says before she can stop herself.

"Hmm?" He's staring at her from under a greasy fringe of dark hair, a cracker hanging from his mouth and his posture casual, noncommittal. But Maggie knows that casual is the last thing he is. Daryl was aware of everything around him, from the birds shifting through the branches overhead to the dog he'd heard sniffing around the north-western side of the campsite—he was always scouting for the smallest hint of danger.

It only takes five words, but that was enough: "Take care of my sister."

Daryl looks down, swallowing, the saltine cracker forming a lump in his throat. He nods once before looking up, grunting his acknowledgement. It's not too big of a statement—not like he hasn't been taking care of Beth since the prison fell—but it adds a whole 'nother load of weight bearing down on his shoulders.

Maggie smiles, if a little sad, and leaves.

Daryl turns back to Beth, surprised to see her eyes are open and vacant, staring forward. "Darlin'?" he probes, returning his arm to its position curled around Beth. She tugs him closer. Daryl, again, tries to maintain that distance between them. His old fears are always on the edge of his subconscious, telling him he's or stupid or ugly or unworthy of someone like Beth, usually in his old man's or Merle's cackling voice.

"Can I have one of them crackers?" she asks in a voice barely above a whisper.

Daryl hums his agreement and offers her the finest selection of jam crackers in the walker-ridden, post-apocalyptic world. She picks one from him and begins to chew on it, her jaw working in a steady, slow motion.

Daryl sets the crackers on her side of the sleeping bag before finally relaxing, resting his head on the substitute pillow—a bunched-up old jumper. "Ya better eat it, Greene. All of it."

She's quiet for a minute before replying, the slightest touch of liveliness in her voice. "Or what?"

"Or I might jus' never leave ya."


	3. Before Sunrise

**Okay, I think I finally figured out to work this shit. I just wanna say thanks to all you guys who have supported me so far. You're hella fine. And I'm on tumblr, too: sheriff-grimes-rhymes-dirty**

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><p>At dawn Daryl wakes with a start. He doesn't mean to fall asleep when Beth shares his sleeping bag—he doesn't like to leave her alone and unprotected in the dark. But, as the night rolled in, his gaze alternates between the sleeping form of the woman beside him and the blanket of stars above. Even when he was a kid, and his old man had forced him to spend days and nights in a constant state of hunger and coldness, Daryl could never seem to wrap his head around the vast endlessness of the sky. The sight of a hundred million stars blinking down at him had lulled him into a somewhat comfortable—well, as comfortable as you could get sleeping in clothes that hadn't seen a bar of soap in weeks and stinkin' of walker blood—slumber, although waking up was a whole different story.<p>

Like most mornings, he awoke curled around Beth in a childlike position—her back to his chest, limbs tangled together, his head cradled in the curve of her neck. She's smooth and soft against the scruff of his cheek, and she smells so damn good—the milky scent of Judith's formula combined with her own natural flowery perfume—and Daryl lips twist into a smirk at his own musk, imprinted on her skin. Flyaway strands of her hair tickles Daryl's nose, but he doesn't want to wipe them away, he doesn't want to ruin this moment. Because what he feels in that moment is content and warm and golden, blanketing him in a sense of security and something he ain't never felt before, something dangerously close to—

—Beth rouses in her sleep, uttering a soft, drowsy murmur that sounds something like Daryl's name. He realizes, a little too gleefully, that she was dreaming about him.

"Darlin'?" he whispers in her ear, feeling the rough catch of his stubble scrape against her skin.

She shivers in his arms and Daryl's certain he hears his name on her lips—a low, husky plea that travels straight to his groin. Beth shifts in her sleep, a little moan escaping her as she pushes back against him. Daryl can't stop his body from reacting—besides Beth's tender, if chaste, caresses he hadn't felt the real touch of a woman in about two years—and soon his pants are strung tight in a feeling he had long learned to endure with Beth. Squirming and uncomfortable, Daryl knew he had to leave Beth before she woke up, ignoring the wonderful feeling of friction she offered. It drove him damn near insane sometimes.

Just as he made the decision to gather himself together and find a secluded spot far from camp Beth rolled backwards, her body pressed flush to his chest. One of her long, thin arms curls around his shoulders. "Mornin'," she says, her mouth stretching into a yawn that Daryl might've found cute save for the frantic pounding of his heart. He wore a boyish deer-in-the-headlights look that Beth first found endearing, and then disquieting.

"Daryl?"

"Mm?" He doesn't dare to look at her, his fingers shaking with nervous energy.

"Whats wrong?" Beth turns fully onto her other side so she could face him without having to crane her neck and—

_Oh_.

"Daryl?"

He grinds out a grunt of acknowledgement, eyes squeezed tight. Beth lays a hand on his cheek, running her thumb over the point of his cheekbone. Daryl opens his eyes at the touch, embarrassed and ashamed at his lack of inhibition. Beth can only grin at the sight of Daryl Dixon—a man of walker-slaying renown and physical prowess—reduced to no more than a little boy.

"I should leave." He says suddenly, withdrawing from her.

"No," Beth is saying, grabbing hold of the front of his shirt. "No. You don't have to leave."

Daryl scrutinizes her, his brow creasing and expression wary. He still searches for the lie in her words, almost like he was waiting for the day Beth would tell the dirty old redneck to stop grabbing at her. Instead, Beth raises her hands up to wrap around the cool skin of his neck, fingers fisting his hair.

"We got an hour till sunup, Mr. Dixon," she murmurs against his lips. "We may as well use it."

"Beth," he warns lowly, dangerously.

"Not _that_, just a little . . . release."

Daryl glances away from her in obvious deliberation, although he already knows that she'll get what she wants eventually. Overhead, the sky is growing pale as dawn fast approaches, the stars slowly fading. Daryl almost regrets teaching Beth how to read the sun. Michonne had departed the camp to check the snares and scout the perimeter not long after Daryl had awoken, and he knew she had no intention of returning until the air was thick with Georgian heat. The remaining inhabitants of camp are quiet, asleep, and the two of them are located some way from the others, hidden and alone. They are safe, secluded, and—for once—time was on their side.

Finally, Daryl grunts in agreement, dipping his head to kiss Beth. His shoulders are stiff with tension, his restrain evident in the way he rests on his elbows over her, holding back ever so slightly. She coaxes his mouth open with her tongue, falling into a familiar rhythm they had long since learnt the steps to. Slowly, with tender touches to the side of his face and tracing patterns on the bare skin of his biceps, Beth manages to ease the strain from Daryl's body. His leg slips between hers on its own accord and Beth urges him even closer, gripping the back of his shirt. Wrapped up in each other, Beth can feel his hardness pressed against her hip. A trill of excitement passes through her, heat pooling low in her abdomen.

Their kiss is slow and languid, but there's an insistence behind it. Daryl and Beth don't have to prepare for an inevitable interruption and spring apart, embarrassed and flushed with want. They don't have to bear each other's absence until they fall into bed, exhaustion taking precedent over fulfilling their most basic carnal needs. But in this moment they have all the time in the world, and they want to use it, to actually be together for more than two minutes.

Daryl's fingers travel under the hem of Beth's singlet, revelling in the silk of her skin—she's so goddamned smooth. She moans into his open mouth and—Lord help Daryl if she keeps on making noises like that—it spurs him on. His rough, calloused touch travels further upwards, grazing over the skin of her stomach, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. His hands stop, hesitant and questioning, just at the rounded curve of a breast—Beth wasn't wearing a bra for Chrissake. Her grip tightens in his too-long hair, nodding as her mouth moves furiously against his.

They'd slept in less clothing than this, rumpled and tired, but nothing compares to when the object of your attention is located beneath the obtrusive feel of material and buttons and buckles.

And Beth seems to think Daryl's not moving fast enough, so she abandons her hold on him to reach down and pull her own shirt over her head. Daryl's gaze is locked onto Beth's, and he's not daring to look down past her lust-wild eyes and swollen lips. Her fingernails dig into his arms, and both of them are breathing heavily, practically panting.

"It's okay, Daryl," she says.

He makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat, a question.

"Mr. Dixon," she's teasing him now, "I ain't asking you."

He can feel a smirk—slow and wicked—pulling at his lips, loving the insistent tug in his hair. He'd grown in out for that reason, so Beth had something to keep hold of. But it doesn't matter how confident he is, or the sense of comfort and belonging that settles over him in Beth's arms, Daryl would always feel out of his depth. His fingers are a light pressure as they travel upwards, unsure and fumbling, his heart beating frantically at his ribcage—

—And then Beth's gasping, pulling his lips down to hers in a kiss that damn near sears him.

They stay like that; Beth's talking low and encouraging in Daryl's ear, guiding him in his tentative actions. His hands drift downwards too, inside her pants and back up, pinpointing the places where she gasps the loudest or is damn near robbed of her breath. Beth's a wonderland under his fingertips, pale and beautiful and smooth, and she's all his.

Daryl is grateful for her guidance, but there's a small part of him that hates himself for not being better at this, that his grown ass has about as much experience as a thirteen-year-old boy. His daddy's voice is firing off in his head, calling him and Beth all types of awful things, but he pointedly ignores it. Daryl isn't going to let his old man ruin this moment.

Beth's world is tipping on its axis. Daryl is so close, a comforting and heavy weight laid against her, and when his lust-dark eyes finds her in silent question a beautiful golden warmth bubbles within her. He's a little awkward whenever they do something new, like when Beth straddles his lap when Daryl was in a sulk, or when she plays lazily with the ends of hair seated around the campfire with everyone to see. His expression is a picture of wide-eyed shock, his mouth agape as he struggles to adjust to the situation. But once he does that little bit more of Daryl's former self—too much like Merle for Beth's liking—chips away and he's able to be the man he wants to be, the man he wants to be for Beth. Overwhelmed with the feel of Daryl's mouth on her, Beth's hands slips beneath the back of his thin, dirt-brown shirt. Daryl freezes up, his whole body rigid with tension, hardly daring to breathe.

"Daryl?" Beth asks, worried. "Whats wrong?"

He reaches around and tugs her hand out of his shirt. "Don'," he speaks through gritted teeth, rolling off her. On his back, jaw clenched tight, he throws his arm over his face and suddenly they're not even touching. There's an expanse of space between them, empty and hollow.

Beth suddenly feels cold and naked and stupid. She pulled the blanket over her chest, where Daryl's lips had been moments before. "Daryl, what happened? Whats wrong?"

"Jus' don' do that, Greene."

"What? Touch you?"

"No." In an echo of his abrasive self he says the word mean and harsh.

"Then what?"

"My shirt. It stays on."

Beth huffs, which was probably the worst thing she could've done. Daryl sits up to look at her, _down_ at her, with an expression that could damn well curdle milk. "I don' want ta take my shirt off, okay?" It's almost a threat, low and dangerous and cold.

The younger Greene sister realizes whatever he's hiding from her it scares him, scares him more than anything else ever has. He's refusing to look at her again, gaze fixed on an unseen point. Beth is scared he'll leave her, just stand up and walk away, never to thread his fingers with hers or sleep with him curled against her back. They weren't meant to end, at least not like this, in the fetal stages of their relationship.

"Daryl," Beth pleads, rising up into a sitting position. Blanket clutched to her chest, she reaches forward, brushing the hair behind his ear. Daryl flinches, something he hasn't done under her touch in a long time, but he holds his ground.

He is a beautiful and broken creature, and there was no fucking way Beth was going to let Daryl Dixon slip through her fingers and let him think he meant nothing.

"It's okay," Beth murmurs gently. Slowly, carefully, she moves closer to Daryl until her bent legs are positioned on either side of him, her chin resting daintily on his rounded shoulder. Her arms wrap around his midsection. "I'm right here, Daryl. I'm not going anywhere."

She can feel that he's still strung tight, ready to break and shatter into a million pieces. The younger Greene sister drops a kiss to the exposed skin of his neck. Daryl scratches at his forehead with two fingers, inclines his head to the side to appraise her out of the corner of his eye.

"Ya mean that?" he mutters.

Beth didn't expect him to relent so easily, to be so quick to fall back into their familiar, if fragile, pattern. But she doesn't stop the slow, affectionate smile she feels coming on, because Daryl's little mumble of a question—no matter how gruff—meant he wants to make this work. He wants to be with her, which would have been an impossible feat a year ago. Beth realizes he's changed. And it was for the better.

"I mean it all with all my heart, Mr. Dixon."

He nods, glancing down as he hums his acknowledgement.

"C'mere," Beth chides, lying back down. She pulls Daryl down with her.

The younger Dixon brother turns towards her instinctively, curling against Beth's side. He nestles into her neck, his chilled nose pressed to the point of her skin where her neck meets her shoulder. His arm wraps around her, tightening at her waist, fingers digging into her flesh. Beth runs a hand through his hair before kissing him, cradling his head like a child. Daryl sucks in a deep, shuddering breath that makes Beth think he's crying for a second. But then he raises his head, dry-eyed and managing a tenuous smile for her benefit more than his.

"I don' deserve ya, Beth Greene." Daryl says, like he believes it.

"That's bullshit," she whispers, her voice iron-strong and unwavering. "We deserve each other. And don't you ever think otherwise, Daryl Dixon, because it ain't true. You're mine and I'm yours, and nothing is ever gonna change that—not even what you cook up in that brain of yours."

A strangled noise escapes his throat as he places a light, chaste kiss to her lips—a mere press of skin to skin. Beth feels a slight wetness on her cheeks. They don't break apart until they need to breathe, and then Beth wipes at the damp trail of a tear on Daryl's face, erasing the evidence of it. His mouth curls into a crooked smile, slow and fond and warm, before placing a kiss on her forehead. Beth thinks their romantic endeavours wouldn't surpass gentle touches and even gentler kisses until Daryl's open palm skates across her bare stomach.

"Daryl," she gasps his name like a prayer. The younger Dixon brother smirks against the skin of her neck, his fingertips travelling up and up and _up_, finally resting on the side of her neck that his mouth has so cruelly neglected. He has never expected it to be so natural with Beth, that one carefully placed touch could make her squirm and gasp beneath him. Spurred on by the slow-burning fire Daryl's touch had stoked within her, Beth surges forward, pushing Daryl onto his back in a huff.

He looks up at her through storm-blue eyes, watching Beth as she straddles his hips like she was born to do it. Her half-naked body is vulnerable to the crisp morning air, and Beth decides she'll walk around topless if it made Daryl look at her with utter wonder, likes she's the whole goddamned world to him. Bracing her hands on either side of Daryl's head she kisses him, long and deep and meaningful, putting everything she can into making him see—that's he's worth it, that's he's good, that's he's everything she needs. Daryl seems to believe her too, his hands locked on her pale, slim hips in a vice-like grip, his mouth moving against hers in a sort of crazed fervour. His touch skims up her back and down, cupping her ass, causing Beth's hip to roll forward on instinct. And then it's Daryl who's the one gasping, the feeling of Beth writhing against him eliciting a pleasure that borders on pain.

"Daryl?" Beth asks, brushing the greasy strands of hair off his forehead so he could finally have a clear vision of her. She kisses him, on the lips and then on his cheeks, before rising above him. Her hair is a wild mess, haloing her smooth face and kiss-swollen lips. Daryl's no better, with lust-dark eyes and a mused, rumpled appearance that's far too sexy for Beth's liking.

"Hmm?" He can't seem to articulate a proper response.

"Does the same rule apply to your pants as it does to your shirt?"

His hand stops on her back, frozen mid-action. Daryl tilts his head to the side, blinking furiously as his mind works to process exactly what Beth's proposing, his mouth hanging open. He couldn't speak now, even if he tried.

"What're ya sayin', Greene?" he asks slowly, taking care to enunciate.

"I mean . . ." her fingers slip down his abdomen and Daryl. Stops. Breathing. She fumbles at his belt buckle for a moment, but she recovers quickly. Slowly, so slow, Beth works it undone and Daryl can feel him responding hot and hard against her. He wants to tell her to stop, that she doesn't need to prove anything by doing this, but he can't seem to think past the feel of Beth at the waistband of his pants, so tentative and so close.

"I mean this," and then her hands are inside Daryl's pants, grasping him.

He can't help a moan ripping from his throat, a _fuck_ hissing through clenched teeth. Beth grins at him like some temptress, and then her hands are goddamned fuckin' _moving_. Daryl vaguely remembers telling Beth what to do, how fast or how slow, what was enough pressure and what wasn't. It sounds coherent and distinct in his head, but when he dares to speak the words escape him in an overwhelming rush, jumbled and messy.

It doesn't take long—Daryl hasn't felt a woman's touch in years and Beth hands are so soft and so warm—and then Daryl's tensing, shuddering, gripping at Beth's hip so hard he leaves half-moon scratches imprinted on her skin.

Sometime later—time seemed to have lost all meaning to Daryl, it could've been days for all he knows—he feels Beth deliver a quick, firm kiss to his mouth. The younger Dixon brother's response is languid, buzzed with a feeling he had long since learnt to forget. Beth peppers kisses to his face—mouth, cheeks, eyes, forehead, chin, beard, hair—before working her way down the scruff of his beard to rest her head in the crook of his neck. Beth's humming happily, the sound reverberating through her chest and his.

They'd dressed soon after they'd finished, returning to the comfort and security of the sleeping bag to share a few rare moments together, alone. It was nearing sunup, and Lord help Daryl because he never wants to leave. Beth is playing with the frayed collar of his shirt between intermittent kisses to the sensitive spots at his neck, right behind his ear, and for once Daryl was at ease with the level of intimacy the simple action entailed. His hand curls around her waist, holding her close, and the other was absently stroking the smooth length of the arm Beth had flings across his chest.

The sounds of the world waking up comforts Daryl—animals rustling in the undergrowth, leaf litter crunching underfoot, the distant trickle of water in a nearby stream. He watches the black shadows of birds flitter in the branches overhead, framed by the eggshell blue of the morning sky. He is warm and happy and relaxed—almost snorting at how ridiculous the notion sounded—and it is possible due to the beautiful young woman in his arms, Beth fuckin' Greene.

Beth also feels more at home than she had in a long time, even stretching past the prison and her daddy's farm. A nameless song, slow and sweet, was swirling in her head. She can't seem to stop smiling, or stop touching Daryl. Usually tense or reserved under her fingertips, his muscles were lax and his touch on her arm was somewhat tender. Their bodies meld together in a feeling of rightness, and soon Beth comes to realize her and Daryl would lapse into a state of contentment they would never know apart.

Beth props herself up on her elbows, feet kicking up, grinning up a storm. Daryl returns the favour in a crooked smirk that was equal parts endearing and sensual, almost compelling her to climb back on top of him and do the whole damn thing all over again.

"What'sa matter, darlin'?"

"Nothin'," she says, unable to contain her face-splitting smile. "Not a damn thing is wrong with this moment. It's perfect."

Daryl leans in to kiss Beth on the lips, practically nuzzling her. "It is, ain't it?"

Judith's soft cries pierce the air, closely followed by Rick's tired mumbling. Glenn is up soon after; cracking jokes and smiling as he proceeds to stoke the embers of last night's dying fire, coaxing it into a healthy flame. Sasha starts warming up three cans of baked beans, making sure to poke holes in the metal lid so they don't explode. Maggie is grumbling at early morning calls and Carl is cursing and Carol, Tyreese and the others all congregate around the small fire. Murmurs of sleep-weary talk and good mornin's are heard, and there is footsteps and clothes rustling and bones cracking in wakeup stretches, breathing a semblance of life into their once-silent camp.

Daryl presses a quick kiss to Beth's forehead, pinning wisps of blonde hair under his lips. "Looks like paradise doesn' last forever, Greene." He moves to the edge of the sleeping bag, slipping his worn, clunky boots and winged vest on.

Beth swipes his signature red bandana from the pocket of his pants as he stands. He peers down at her in faux frustration. "What're ya talking 'bout, Mr. Dixon?" she teases, using his bandana to tie her braid.

He shoots her a questioning look in typical Daryl Dixon fashion: eyes squinting through greasy strands of too-long hair, crossbow hanging over his shoulder, covered in a perpetual layer of grime and dirt.

"Ever since I found you I haven't left paradise."

Daryl has never smiled so fast, or quite so easily.


	4. Four Walls And A Roof

Their relationship hasn't surpassed stolen kisses and hidden, lingering touches until Rick made the decision to take up residence in that suburban house they'd cleared out a few days ago. The nights were growing long and cold, so it was about time they found a place they could wait out the winter in. The house is nothing special, two-storey and white-panelled, with oddly cheerful red shutters and somewhat intact curtains. It may have been the last place on earth that resembled a real home.

They search the house for food and supplies. A few canned goods and jars of jelly—Carl had even found and called dibs on peanut butter—are stored inside the kitchen cupboards, hidden in cereal boxes and under overturned buckets by someone before them. They still have a pretty good stash of food leftover from the general store, but the more they had the better. And after Rosita manages to open the metal gun locker in the garage with a blowtorch the group scavenge two low-powered hunting rifles, a standard-issue Beretta handgun that Abraham is quick to claim, and a few cases of ammo. They use sheets of plywood and rows of picket fencing to board up the windows and doors. It's a damn fine haul, the house has strong foundations, and they have enough food and set enough snares to last a few weeks. Rick proposes holding out here for as long as it works and the decision is unanimous: they'll stay.

The beds are in good condition, almost clean enough to sleep in after airing the sheets out, snapping them free of dirt. The living room couches and wooden chairs are in good nick too, pulled into a semi-circle around the sturdy tepee of tinder in the cavernous fireplace.

The group are dead on their feet by sundown. They can hardly stay awake after a feast of strawberry jam and lukewarm baked beans, blinking furiously and rubbing eyes to fend off the lure of sleep. It's the presence of four walls and a roof, shielding them from the ugliness of outside, and a real place to lie down and get a decent night's rest, which awakens the feeling of fatigue and weariness in them. They congregate in living room, amassed around the small, strong fire burning in the hearth, a scattered, soft glow of candles illuminating a path throughout the house—kitchen, the front door and other vantage points, bathroom, designated sleeping areas.

Carl calls it quits first, taking the teenage boys room upstairs—full of comics and action figures and movie posters—with Judith. Daryl is pleased with how Rick and his son are taking a more active role in Judith's care instead of leaving it to Beth to handle. She certainly likes doing it , and loves Judith with all fibre of her being, and the girl wouldn't say no if Rick asked her for help, but Judith ain't her kid. She's not her responsibility, not her burden.

Michonne and Tyreese take the couch, saying they'd take watch for the night. Noah joins them quickly, curling up on an window seat with a woollen blanket. Abraham, Rosita, Tara and a reluctant Eugene bunk in the adjacent garage. Carol hasn't wandered upstairs since she stumbled across a frilly pink girl's room, sending a fresh wave of grief coursing through her, and so she joins the group downstairs. Two rooms are left, and Beth thinks she would've to bear sleeping with Maggie, Glenn and Sasha in the girl's room, and that Rick would take the master bedroom and leave Daryl on the living room floor with only his backpack for a pillow. But, Rick gets up and wipes his jam-sticky hands on his thighs, saying that he's going to spend the night with Carl and Judith. He doesn't feel right leaving his kids alone just so he can sleep with a pillow under his head. And then he offers the master bedroom to Daryl.

Beth's heart pounds at her ribcage at the thought of Daryl sleeping in a bed that was far too big for him. They had yet to have sex, to do more than share ten short minutes together late at night or early in the morning before Judith launched into a fit of crying or a walker trigged their boundary line.

And clothing was sorta a prerequisite to their private time after Glenn caught them with their pants down, quite literally, and Daryl almost broke his nose for staring quite so blatantly.

Daryl's shirt remains on at all times, even when he felt like he could just take it off and bare the years of scars and pain to Beth. It is a fleeting thought, because the moment he opens his mouth to speak and looks into Beth's old-soul eyes he clams up. Merle was loud in his head, calling his baby brother a little bitch in his slow, self-amused drawl, but Daryl's old man was the worst. Sometimes he swears he can feel his meaty knuckles raining down on him, blow after blow, or the hard toe of a boot and the sting of a belt. When he looks at Beth with his bastard father in his head Daryl can only see an angel, shining with radiant purity and happiness, and he feels dirty. Like the more she knew about his worthless, two-bit loser past she'd lose that lil' ray of hope that had drawn him to her. Daryl certainly didn't want to be the reason for extinguishing that light within Beth because it kept him going; it—_she_—kept him alive.

"Daryl?" Rick prompts.

He shrugs, chewing on the pad of his thumb as he grunts noncommittally.

"That's not an answer." The former sheriff sounds tired, although not frustrated, as he rubs the blur of sleep from his face with the heel of his hand. "Do you want the room or not?"

Daryl's gaze flitters across the room to Beth for a second, ignoring the people surrounding them and Rick's gaze boring into the side of his head, and he seems to ask for her permission. Beth doesn't think, she just smiles at him, nodding imperceptibly. The younger Dixon brother represses the smirk pulling at his lips and fixes his attention on Rick.

"I'll take it," he says. Rick barely acknowledges his reply, waving a distracted hand in farewell as he climbs the stairs. Michonne is watching him leave, half-grinning at his behaviour, leaving Beth to wonder if there was something more than respect and loyalty between the two.

Everyone is near asleep in their seats, including a snoring Maggie, who thankfully missed Daryl getting a room to himself. But Beth is wide awake, butterflies kicking up a storm in her stomach as she steals quick glances Daryl's way, but the crossbow-toting hunter was doing his best to ignore her. Daryl regrets taking the room the moment he accepts it, because he looks at Beth like the only reason he wanted a bed if is she wanted it, like they were planning on using it later or something. And it's not like the idea of spending a night with Beth in a real bed is a bad thing—hell, it'd probably be the greatest moment of his life—but it fuckin' terrified him. Daryl wasn't stupid, he knows what would probably happen when she stepped into his room and locked the door behind her, and that would lead to Daryl stripping off his shirt one way or another.

And Daryl doesn't think he's ready for Beth's eyes to fill with shock, disgust or worse,_ pity_, and realize that he was just a dirty old redneck. That he was ugly and underserving and ain't worth another second of her precious time.

But, despite all his bravado, when Daryl raises his gaze from the dirt-lined maps of his palms to find Beth looking at him. The thought of ever living a life without her sours and dies in his mind. Her expression is soft and affectionate, and the dim glow of the fire illuminates the lines of her slim, blonde profile. He's never wanted to touch her so bad. He can't believe he'd woken up beside her this morning, can't fathom he'd been the one to cup her cheek and kiss her swiftly on the lips in front of everyone before sweeping the house for walkers, can't hardly understand why a girl like her would ever want to be with a guy like him.

Beth's lips pull into a smile, waiting for him to do the same.

Silencing the voices of his brother and father, Daryl offers her a crooked smirk.

Then, Beth yawns and stretches out like a cat in the sun, her sweater riding up and exposing a sliver of pale flesh that drives Daryl wild. "Okay, guys," she announces to the group, "I thinks it's time I went to bed." She stands, navigating the sea of chairs, backpacks, cushions and couches to pass Daryl, fingers reaching out to skim the side of his face. He's about to take Beth's hand and follow her out like a lost puppy when Maggie rouses from her sleep.

"Hey, Beth, wait up. Me and Glenn are comin'," the older Greene sister says, nudging her husband awake. He does so with a start, wiping crusty sleep from his eyes and yawning loudly like a little kid. The pair stumbles towards the couch Beth stands by; the one Daryl is currently seated at, oblivious to his somewhat annoyed squint and her helpless expression.

Then Maggie and Glenn are moving towards the stairs and Beth can't tell them that she doesn't want to go. She can't make I known to the group that she would rather spend a night alone with a man twice her age than her sister. Most people had come to accept the idea of Beth and Daryl together the moment she stepped back into camp; they had even made their peace with the two sharing a sleeping bag, but a locked room with a real bed? It was something you didn't want to flaunt, at least not until Maggie or Rick had given their blessing.

So, Beth allows Maggie and Glenn to shepherd her towards the stairs. She shot Daryl one last look, apologetic, but her knowing smile promised the night wasn't over yet. The younger Dixon brother felt one of those little smiles pull at his lips, something Beth managed to coax out of him often.

"If you keep doing that everyone is going to start thinking you have feelings, Pookie." Carol says from her seat closest to the fire, feet up on a nearby chair. She's teasing, grinning at the fact she caught in him in the act.

Michonne laughs on exhale, almost smiling as she shoots Carol something like respect. Being at the mercy of two women who could whip his dumb ass without even batting an eyelash made Daryl uneasy. Women were always too smart for their own good, and their group was no exception—Beth, Maggie, Sasha, the lot of 'em.

"Stop." He replies simply, sliding down the back of the couch.

"Next thing you know you'll be wearing pink bathrobes," Michonne jokes—actually _jokes_.

"Stop." His hair is in his eyes, and he's chewing his thumb raw.

"And saving cats from trees." It's Carol turn now.

"And writing love poems." Tara's having a ball.

"And buying chocolates." Rosita's in on it too.

"_Stop_."

Daryl huffs, sitting forward as he glares at each woman equally. They're all grinning up a storm, laughing at his misfortune and poking fun at him. Tyreese—he's the only other guy awake in the room as Noah is fast asleep and Abraham and Eugene are already hunkered down in the garage—is lying on a nearby couch, apparently in deep slumber, but his amused smile says otherwise.

"Fine," he grumbles. "I'll leave. Y'all are mad anyway."

Then he's gone and the back of his neck is burning as the room explodes in a titter of laughter. He swipes his crossbow from its place resting on the doorway and pounds up the stairs; bee-lining for whichever door led to the master bedroom. Turns out it wasn't the second on the left, like he thought, and rather the first on the left because he damn well barges in to the sight of—

"Daryl!" Beth is shrieking, standing there in nothing but a bra and panties.

He's staring dumbly at her, ogling like he hadn't seen a half-naked women before—Lord, he'd seen _all_ of Beth many times prior, but it had been weeks. Sasha is snoring on the ground. Maggie and Glenn had set up shop in one of the two single beds to give Beth some privacy to change. But now the older Greene sister is rising up, looking like she is 'bout ready to murder him. And Daryl can't seem to move or speak, frozen with his hand on the doorknob as he stares at Beth open-mouthed.

"Daryl!" Beth says again, frantically motioning him to leave with her shirt as Maggie reaches for her gun.

Then, somehow, he finds a way to break his gaze from Beth and slam the door shut. He walks quickly to the nearby door, making sure it was where he was actually supposed to be before claiming sanctuary. He collapses against the closed door, hands braced on his bent knees as a long breath of air escapes him. There goes his decent night sleep—like that was even possible sleeping on something other than a hard floor with Beth in the room over—

_Hell_.

Daryl can't remember the last time he had fallen into his sleeping bag, exhausted and dirty, without Beth beside him. The point of his canine is tearing into the sensitive flesh of his thumb before he knew it because, well, shit. He had been the guy who didn't like to be touched, or told someone cared for him, who had responded the slightest inkling of feelings by pushing them down and pretending they weren't there. And now here he was; the crossbow-toting hunter and asshole extraordinaire, hung up over the fact he wouldn't be spending the night wrapped tight around his woman.

Sighing, he sits on the edge of the bed and shucks off his winged vest. He clears the nearby nightstand and lays his crossbow on it. The mattress dips between his weight and the room is much too dark and much too quiet for his liking. Daryl used to revel in the solace of being alone, without someone to stab him in the back or tear his heart, but now it all just feels so empty. He can hear the muffled voices—barely—underneath his feet and even the hushed conversation between Rick and Carl next door. He fishes the neglected pack of smokes in the back pocket of his pants and finds his Zippo lighter. Daryl gets as far as holding the lit cigarette to his pursed lips, ready to inhale a plume of toxins into his lungs when he thinks the better of it, stamping the butt out. He needs to calm down, but he won't find that peace with the acrid taste of smoke burning his tongue.

He needs Beth—and the thought damn near kills him.

There are round, vanilla-scented candles arranged on the nightstand a few inches from him—Beth had found them and set about placing them around the house for further use. Daryl uses the controlled flame of his lighter to set the candles aglow, the sight transporting him to another time, another place—to the kitchen of the funeral home. He had frequented the scene a thousand times in his head, replaying his mumbles and shrugs and suggestive silences over and over again, always punctuated by Beth's sweet, soft _oh_ of surprise. Daryl hadn't known—or even understood—what he was feeling back then, only a fluttering of butterflies low in his stomach, and that he was down to feel them.

Daryl pulls his boots off aggressively and scratches at his forehead with two fingers. Underneath his fingertips he can feel the years' worth of sticky grime and dirt layered there, and then the creases of wrinkles beneath. He grabs at his belt roughly, undoing the buckle in quick succession to lessen the pressure around his waist. Daryl almost debates stripping his shirt off, but it's cool enough to keep it on, so he does.

Tired beyond comprehension, he closes his eyes, but the possibility of sleep eludes him. Just as Daryl came to the conclusion he was going to be doing anything but sleeping tonight he hears a knock at the door. Confused, he walks to the door and opens a crack. He is expecting it to be Maggie; ready to skewer him for his earlier behaviour, but the Lord seemed to be smiling down upon him for once in his damned life because it was Beth.

Beth Greene, her face scrubbed clean and her pale, sunshine hair loose. She's donning a clean set of night clothes—a grey knitted sweater over some absurdly short, dove-white nightdress that gets Daryl hot under the collar in all the right ways.

"I missed you so bad, Daryl Dixon."

He leans on the doorway, unable to say the same thing back.

"Well," she teases, "are you gonna invite me in or what?"

He can't deny her a damn thing because suddenly he's nodding mutely and she's breezing past him, all smiles and the faintest hint of her natural perfume in the air. Lord, she doesn't just occupy space she _fills_ it, emanating with a bright and shiny light that makes him feel all types of mush.

"What're ya gonna do if Maggie comes sniffing 'round?" Is all he can manage.

She shoots him a sidelong glance, sitting down in the exact place he had been moments ago. "We finally get a room to ourselves, Daryl, for the whole night and all you can talk about is my sister?"

Daryl flushes with something like embarrassment, only trusting to look at Beth through a squinted side-eye. He tries to ignore how high the nightdress has rode up on her thighs, revealing silky-white skin he can't believe he'd touched before, can't believe he'd kissed before. It doesn't matter how long they'd been together, doing things couples usually did, Daryl would never be able to work his head around how someone like Beth wanted to be with someone like him. He's practically vibrating with nerves, a ball of tension bouncing around in his chest, but Beth seems to ease his biggest doubts with one level look. Her delicate eyelashes are lowered, her smile becoming something more serious, gentle reassurance and affection replacing glee.

"C'mere," she says softly. Daryl's meanders closer, holding his pants up with one hand whilst trying not to stare directly at Beth. As he comes to stand before her Beth situates her hands in her lap, drawing Daryl's attention to the smooth expanse of her skin once again. He swallows, Adam's apple bobbing in his throat.

"You okay?" She is asking if this was all right—the touching and the bed and the two of them alone.

In all honesty, Daryl is scared out of his wits. He wanted to turn tail and run. It isn't Beth's fault—Lord it could never be Beth's fault—but _feelings_ had never been his forte. When Beth looks at him, her gaze open and uninhibited, he feels inadequate, like he could never return what she had so willingly given him. Intimacy was something that would always manage to unnerve the younger Dixon brother, but when it came to Beth he wants to bear that pain and discomfort.

He wants to be with her, even if it meant facing his demons.

He wants to be better.

Daryl lowers to his knees in front of Beth, staring up at her like a little boy, making it apparent he is a slave to her every whim. His vulnerability made something clench in Beth's chest, the feeling so poignant that tears started to pool in her eyes, blurring the vision of the man before her. She wipes at a stray tear with the back of her hand, the other reaching out to touch the side of Daryl's face. The point of his cheekbone is sharp under her palm, accompanied by the greasy slick of his skin and the rough scratch of his beard, but Daryl's quivering under her touch. He buries his head in her lap, wrapping his arms around her middle in search of comfort, in need of something tangible to hold onto.

Beth hunches over so her lips are at the top of his head, fingers threading into his dark hair instinctively. She whispers to him that everything was okay, attempting to soothe the internal wounds that would forever bleed within him. Merle and his old man would be having a field day in Daryl's head at his sign of weakness, but he had learnt how to curb their voices. Because if Daryl made the ill-fated decision to listen to them he'd probably wind up hurting him and Beth, and he knew he couldn't handle that—not now, not ever.

"Daryl," Beth whispers his name.

He's not crying, but the wave of emotion that hits him from the stomach up attests to that.

"_Daryl_."

He doesn't want to look at her and see the pity shining in her old-soul eyes, but he does. And it breaks his goddamned heart. Daryl starts to withdraw, already refusing to accept what had transpired between them—the blatant admission of weakness on his part—and ready to push her away. To tell Beth that he didn't care about her in the slightest and this whole thing meant nothing to him because he doesn't need her. That he's fine on his own.

But Beth is grabbing at the front of his shirt and tugging him towards her before Daryl can grasp the situation. "Do not," she says in something like a threat, "even think about leaving, Daryl Dixon. I know what's going on in that head of yours and I can tell you it's not true. There is no reason for you to believe you don't deserve me or some other bullshit. You are a good man. We've both done things we're not proud of but that's okay. Shit happens." She pauses for a breath, her iron-strong will never more apparent than in this moment. "You taught me how to fight for myself, so why don't you let me teach you a few things of my own?"

He doesn't know what she means until Beth pulls him up to her lips, moving in slow-motion. The feel of her mouth is familiar and comforting, easing the wrinkled creases between his eyebrows and relaxing the tension in his shoulders. Her legs spread apart, allowing him to sidle closer to Beth, basking in the warmth and softness of her. Daryl's hands rest on the slight curve of her hips hiding beneath the nightdress, bunching the thin fabric. Beth fingers work to push the dark, greasy strands from his face—she seemed to like his hair more than she liked him—but her hold on him is firm, preventing Daryl from escaping.

But Daryl can't even entertain the idea of leaving Beth, because when they were like this—alone, wrapped up in each other, stripped to their true nature—he drew strength from her. Beth is a source of something good and strong in Daryl's life, so much that it scared him, and the thought of losing that was unthinkable. As hard as it is to simply _be_ with Beth and know that she'll see every good, bad and ugly part of him, he wouldn't have it any other way.

Beth's tugging at his hair, trying to get his attention. "Daryl?"

He pulls back and presses their foreheads together, so close they seem to share the same air. His pants are strung tight, and he's punch-drunk on the intoxicating feel of desire flooding his senses that a questioning mumble is all he can manage.

"Darlin'," he begins uncertainly, "do you . . ." When her lips ghost across his Daryl forgets his own name. "Tonight . . ." He looks at Beth—her eyes are closed, and her breathing is laboured. "Do ya want to tonight? I mean, do ya—"

She opens her eyes. "It's okay. I know." Daryl doesn't reply—he can't—and then: "Are you okay?"

He nods jerkily, bumping their noses together awkwardly. She stutters out a nervous laugh, causing Daryl to snort in amusement. The two look at each other and smile—the action small and gentle and fragile.

"I want ta . . ." Words fail Daryl, but Beth was there to deliver a kiss to the side of his mouth—her way of telling him it was okay, that she trusted him.

"I want to be with you, Daryl Dixon." She says without a shadow of a doubt—unblinking, confident.

Glancing down, he licks his lips before responding quietly: "I want ta be with you too, Beth Greene."


	5. Scars

**Sorry for the wait guys, but I've had some problems with uploading this chapter... It better work now or so help me God. But anyways, I apologise for the delay and can only hope this chapters makes it up to you (wink-wink nudge-nudge).**

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><p>Beth's nimble fingers slip beneath the hem of his shirt.<p>

He freezes, his muscles tensing in preparation for the latter of the flight-or-fight response. Daryl holds still though, not daring to move or breathe in fear of breaking. Beth rests her cheek against his forehead, ensuring this is what Daryl wanted—that it is his choice. He nods imperceptibly, and her lips turn to kiss his hair in acknowledgement.

Daryl thinks he's strong enough to do this. To finally put the phantom of his old man to rest, along with the never-ending cycle of Merle's slow drawl running through his skull—_ain't nobody every gonna care about you 'cept me, lil' brother. Ain't nobody ever will_. Daryl knows Beth cares for him, more than his kin ever did, but the moment Beth's hands graze the raised, rough skin of a scar it's a knee-jerk reaction. He clenches his jaw shut and reels out of her reach, already fighting the need to run. She's staring at him in hurt, her old-soul eyes shining. The scar she's touched is lowest on his back, stretching below the waistband of his pants. He'd received it after swiping his old man's pack of smokes on a dare when he was barely a teenager—it wasn't the first, and it certainly wasn't the last.

"Daryl—"

He cuts her off swiftly. "I can't."

"Look, I just wanted to say—"

"Don't, Greene," he finally meets her gaze, hating how she flinches at the wrath she sees there. And then he's standing, ready to open the door and tell her to leave. "I don' need your pity, I don' need you to tell me you're sorry, and I don' need you—" Halfway across the room he feels an insistent tug on his hand, keeping him firmly planted in his place. Daryl whirls around, snarling at Beth to let him go.

She's fearless; her gaze vacant of all uncertainty and doubt as she forces him to stay put and look at her. Beth releases his hand. She pushes the sleeve of her sweater up her arm and jerks her numerous bracelets away to expose the bare skin of her wrist. Beth takes Daryl's fingers again, pressing them to the slim silver line of a scar on the pale underside of her right wrist.

"What're ya doin'—"

"Just listen to me, Daryl." Her tone broaches no argument, something she had the habit of doing lately. "Just shut up and listen to me for five seconds."

He nods dumbly. The longer he has to psych himself up to tell Beth to leave, the better.

"This," she starts, "is a scar. I got this when I was sixteen, when we were still at Daddy's farm. After my Momma died"—Beth falters for a moment, although she is quick to recover—"I was angry and sad and a million other things. I didn't see the point in living anymore—I even hated Lori for choosing to bring Judith into this world. I made the decision to end it all, but . . . no one would let me out of their sight except Andrea. She opened the door to the bathroom and told me that pain doesn't go away; you just make room for it. She gave me a choice, and I chose to live, Daryl. I chose to make room for it." She pulls her left hand from his, letting him touch her wrist on his own accord.

He vaguely remembers accusing Beth of cutting her wrists for attention back at that old moonshine shack, another drunken regret. In all honesty, Daryl had never understood someone's reasoning for hurting themselves. But, looking at Beth now, the realization clicks into place—she wanted to block out the pain. She had come to the conclusion that in living and caring for someone other than yourself, pain is part of the package. Daryl blinks, glancing at her wrist and noting the stark difference between their skin—tanned on milky-white. Dirty on clean. Old on young. He commits the image to memory. His thumb traces the feel of her scar, the breadth and width of the pale line, now knowing it signified Beth's first of many—her step towards maturity and resilience, her end of innocence.

"And this"—she moved his hand to the scar marring her cheek—"happened when I was kidnapped at the funeral home."

Beth had never uttered a word about her time at Grady Memorial Hospital, leaving it to Noah and Carol to fill in the blanks—she was a ward, she'd fought to escape, she'd nearly died trying. She was tight-lipped on the subject, only offering an ominous, _"I did what I had to do to survive,"_ when Maggie dared to ask her what had happened. Daryl is gonna be the first person she revealed that part of herself to—mirroring what he would do if he ever decided to take his shirt off.

"I don't remember much," Beth admits, "but there was a walker. I was fighting him off on the road and then all I saw was lights. Someone must of hit me 'cause it went black. The next thing I knew I was waking up in the hospital with a cast on my wrist and a few stitches." Her eyes close, lingering shut for a moment. "I asked 'bout you, but they said I was alone. They said I had to repay them for saving me, and I did." Beth sucks in a shaky breath. "Dawn hit me after I helped Noah get out." She moved his hand to the other scar above her brow. "I told her no one was coming; I told her what she was fighting for was bullshit, so she smacked a frame over my head."

Beth's smile is tragic, and Daryl has to look away at the intensity of emotions building in his chest.

"See, we all have our scars." Her voice is breaking, cracking—just like her heart. "We all have our stories, and sooner or later we all have to share them."

"They're not scars, darlin'," Daryl is saying before he can stop himself. "They're marks of a survivor."

Her reply is instant, punching through him: "So are yours."

Beth takes his face in her hands, smiling even as tears slip down her face. He's unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to do much but just stand there and stare at her. This is a new type of pain, one that's not filled with rage or hate, but a deeper, more visceral hurt. It starts low in his gut, tearing at his innards, pulling at his chest, and making his heart ache something fierce. The more he looks at Beth the worse it gets, and soon his knees fail him and he's on the ground again, helpless and defeated.

"Daryl?" He can feel her lips planting kisses to his face, her hands smoothing his hair from his face. "Daryl," she repeats, "I'm right here. It's okay. I'm right here, I'm right beside you." Beth starts rocking him in her arms, treating him like the child he is.

"I can't—" He falters, despising the feeling of wetness on his cheeks. "I can't."

"You can." There she is again, fire and ice.

"I can't."

"You got this far. You beat that life. You survived."

"It's not that simple, Beth!" He's yelling now, not caring who can hear them.

"It is!" She insists, her steel embrace holding him close and refusing to let go. "We both survived and I don't know why you just can't see that and be happy! How come you don't realize that you and me bein' together is the best thing that will ever happen? We have Rick and Maggie and Carol and everyone else. We have each other, food in our stomachs, and a place to sleep. Isn't that enough?"

"It's too much," he whispers.

"Don't ever think you don't deserve me, Daryl Dixon. Don't ever think that, okay?"

He doesn't speak.

"Daryl?" she prompts in the voice from that little girl at Hershel's farm.

He raises his head after a moment's lapse, ashamed at his behaviour. His eyes are weepy. He's clutching a handful of her sweater so hard it's pulling off her shoulder, baring a slim shoulder. His knuckles are white.

"We gotta stay who we are, not who we were." Beth says, echoing their time spent together on the porch of that rundown old moonshine shack. And then, with three little words, she effectively shatters his world: "I love you."

Daryl's head drops, and this time a pitiful whimper escapes him. He goes to wipe at his nose, bumping Beth's outstretched hand in the process. The younger Dixon brother sputters an apology, feeling like a train wreck of feelings and embarrassment and exposed weakness. Lord, if Merle could see him now.

Beth's kissing his face now, relentless in her actions to soothe him. She can taste the salt of Daryl's tears on her lips; can feel him tremble beneath her. Halting her ministrations, she pulls back. Her eyes meet his, something raw and vulnerable passing between them. He's reduced to the little boy his daddy used to beat, and she's the iron-hard girl with scars marring her pretty face, choosing to live even when streams of blood marks her perfect skin. They're both broken, but that's what makes them strong—forged in the flames of pain and weakness to emerge as a phoenix, eternal and damn near invincible.

Gently, Beth brushes a few errant strands of hair behind his ears with such intimacy it sends Daryl tipping over the edge. His arms close around her, pulling her onto his lap and pressed flush against him. His head is buried in her shoulder, enveloped in the scent of Judith's formula and flowers, hating how his tears and grime dirties her—tarnishing her purity. Beth's hugging him with all her might, with the intention of never letting go, her long, unbound hair creating a shield around them. There's no space left to occupy between their bodies, but the air is heavy with unspoken words. It's damn near tragic how much they need each other, how their souls interlink in an unbreakable bond that would shatter another once broken in death.

"You're my light," Daryl's saying now, no longer caring to clutch onto the pretence of protecting himself. Because he isn't protecting himself, he was just hurting Beth and him both, carrying his fears and pain in the prison of his mind. "You're my light at the end of the tunnel."

"Daryl—"

"You're my light at the end of tunnel. And it's just so dark; it's just so goddamned dark, Beth. There's nothing but destruction and fire and death and pain." Daryl's rambling now, an incoherent jumble of words and sentences ramming together. He's a complete and utter fuckin' mess, falling apart in Beth Greene's arm in the master bedroom of some picket-fenced suburban home. "It's just so dark and you're my light, Beth. You're my light at the end of the tunnel. I can't live without you—I just can't."

She's telling Daryl she loves him, over and over again, whispering it against his head. Her breath is hot on the side of the exposed skin of his neck, and her body is a familiar, comfortable weight. Beth's all around him, the scent and feel and taste of her wrapped around him. Daryl even thinks he hears himself say the words back to her—_I love you, I need you, I can't live without you—_with strands of her hair caught in his mouth and fingers digging into the flesh of her hips, grasping for purchase in his whirlwind of emotion. And then, she urges his head up as she dips hers downward, their lips sealed together in a desperate kiss before both of them can even contemplate the thought.

There's no finesse to the action, it's sloppy and fast and wet. Daryl's never felt so centred on the feel of Beth's mouth moulded against him, and neither has she. They kiss as if it is their first and last time they'll ever have the chance to. They kiss like a herd of walkers is descending upon them and this is their last few shared seconds of life together.

They kiss as soul mates do—filled with a sense of belonging, attuned to the shape and feel and taste of their other half, never having felt more at peace than in this moment.

Daryl can't remember ripping Beth's sweater off, but he does recall pressing his lips to the hollow of her throat. He tugs the strap of her nightdress further down her arm, focusing his attentions to the delicate curve of her milk-white shoulder. Daryl can gauge what Beth likes by the tightening grip in his hair, or how she gasps low and needy right in his ear. His fingers work unseen at the buttons on her front, resorting to ripping the fabric apart when his efforts failed. Her breasts spill into his waiting hands. Beth is panting, hurrying to free her arms of her nightdress so Daryl could have full access to the object of his desire—_her_.

And Daryl can't remember gathering Beth in his arms. He can't remember carrying her to bed. He can't remember laying her down on top of the blankets, which he had found plain and cold and empty minutes before, and thinking that never in his life had a bed looked so good, so inviting.

But he remembers everything after. Every. Single. Thing.

He hooks his fingers into the waist of Beth's nightdress; knuckles pressed to the skin of her slim hips, proceeding to pull the fabric down over her ankles in slow, torturous succession. Daryl is drinking in the beautiful sight of her, overwhelmed with a million different emotions he had no skill to name. An outpouring of golden contentment grows in the middle of his chest before spreading outwards, filling every fibre of his body with the one feeling he does recognise: love. He tells Beth he loves her with his hands and mouth and every small action from this day forward—whether it be a crooked smile or presenting her with a cheap gold necklace he scavenged from a chemist store.

But Daryl reframes from uttering the words—or maybe he doesn't remembering doing so—because the more you love someone, he believed, the harder it is to tell them. And it's fuckin' impossible to tell Beth.

His emotions raw and open from their earlier argument, vulnerable from the baring of their two souls, and punch-drunk on lust, Daryl reaches for his belt, his eyes never leaving Beth's luminous face. He's ready to cross that un-crossable line; he's ready to rip down the wall he had built years ago, after his father and mother and Merle; he's ready to truly and completely _be_ with Beth.

Only Beth's gaze flickers to his belt, her old-soul eyes flashing with something dangerously close to fear and alarm that it sends Daryl reeling.

_She doesn't want this_, he thinks. _She doesn't want me._

But Beth is quick to detect his nuance in character—eyes shifting sideways and leaning forward so his shaggy fringe obscures his vision, his warm touch already retreating from her—and she puts a definite end to it. "Daryl, wait," she says, and he does. Beth lays a hand on his cheek before sliding it around his head to grip the roots of his hair and pull Daryl's head forward, pressing their foreheads together. He sighs, the small breath of air that escapes him doing nothing to ease the tension between his shoulders.

Beth's tone is serious, as if she wasn't buck-naked with a man twice her age and her heart wasn't beating in her chest like some caged bird. "Next time you think I don't want to do something, next time you assume I don't want to be with you, don't just pull away. Ask me. Look me in the face and ask me what's wrong, okay?"

He nods.

"Okay."

She quiets, and at her silence Daryl raises his gaze to meet her expectant one. _Oh_.

"Beth?" He begins, momentarily stunned at the sound of the low, husky quality of his voice.

"Yes?"

"Do ya . . ." Again, with the words. "Do ya want ta do this?"

"Daryl?" She's nosing him affectionately, playful and sweet, and he can feel her smile against his scruff.

"Yeah?"

"There's no one I'd rather be with, and no place I'd rather be." She kisses him on the lips in reassurance, quick and swift, before saying: "I love you." Daryl would never get tired of hearing Beth say that, not even when they scream and fight and hurt each other.

It's his turn to kiss her now, long and deep and hard. When Daryl pulls back he and Beth both are panting, flooded with the overwhelming sense of desire, their breaths mingled and limbs tangled. Heat pooling low in her abdomen, Beth can only bear her insatiable need for Daryl—to touch and taste and feel. She knows he wants her, maybe even more than she wants him, and taking his shirt off was the first step of many on this night.

Her hands wander down over his back, to the hem of his shirt. She grips the edge, testing. The tension returns to Daryl's body, and he props himself on his elbows to properly look at her. His storm-blue eyes are hooded with lust, but the fear and pain remains.

Beth dips her head slightly in an unsaid question—_are you okay?_

He scrunches his eyes shut, shaking his head as if to dislodge some dark thought. The voices of his kin are still there—they would never truly leave him—but Daryl can hear Beth's voice, too. And she embodies everything good in this world, everything bright and new and full of promise, gently urging him to forgo his previous inhibitions. To end all that pain and sadness and repressed emotions—which were like shards of glass, tearing his insides apart the longer he denied their existence—and instead he chose to live. Not just to survive, but to live.

And that meant Beth had to see him—every flaw and every imperfection and every little ugly part of him—before he could ever dare to have a good life. A happy life.

Daryl lowers his head, pressing his dry, chapped lips to hers in a small, chaste action, but the message is clear—_I'm okay. I can do this. We can do this_. Taking Beth's hand, he pulls back to sit at the edge of the bed, his bare feet brushing the cold, hardwood floor. Beth follows him, situating herself behind Daryl, her front a mere hair's breadth from his back. She's sitting on bent legs; feet tucked under as her knees cradle the sides of his hips. Beth can physically see the tremor that runs through him, the tell-tale quiver that rocks Daryl's hunched form, so she delivers a kiss to his shoulder blade and wraps her arms around his middle. She's even closer to him now, pressed flush to him as Daryl's shaking intensifies.

"I love you, Daryl Dixon." Beth says, the words ringing clear and true in the dim light of the bedroom.

Daryl still can't seem to utter the words aloud, instead he resorts to showing Beth how much he loves her—he reaches for the edge of his shirt, grips it tight, and pulls it clean over his head.

Beth eases backwards to allow him to undress, and now her gaze is burning on Daryl's back. He hears her slight intake of break and clenches his jaw at the sound. His body is thrumming with tension and fear, on the cliff's edge of falling, but he stays. He stays when Beth's touch alternates from his stomach, around the curve of his hips, to rest on one of his worst scars.

Two lines stretch across the ridges of Daryl's spine, the marks borne of hate and abuse and innocence lost. Beth's hand traces a feather-light path to the scar, memorising the feel of the rough, uneven skin. Daryl's never felt another person's touch on his scars, hell; his own brother didn't even know he had them until long after their old man was in the ground. He's scared of how Beth will react to the burdens he will forever carry and if she'll find him ugly or undeserving—

—And then Beth's kissing the scar. Her lips, her unblemished and perfect lips, are christening the marks he had been disgusted and ashamed about his entire life. All thoughts flee his mind as her gentle fingers trail lower, to another curled scar that disappears under the waistband of his pants. She kisses him there, too. She repeats the action at another scar on the left side of his ribcage. And then she focuses her attention on his longest scar, reaching clean across his right shoulder blade. She kisses the crossed scar at the point of his left shoulder, and then the smaller scar to the right of it, and every other trace of his father's rage she can find. It feels as if her kisses and touches are erasing his past, scar by scar.

Once consumed in fire, Daryl was finally able to be reborn in the ashes.

When Beth's exploration of his past—of the pain and hurt and suffering—finishes, she sidles closer to him. Her chin is resting on his shoulder, her head turned so her nose is buried in the mess of his dark hair. Her hands are back at his midsection, although his back is ablaze with the previous trail of her fingertips and lips. Daryl's breathing is fast, but it is also an even, controlled intake of air. He's never felt more vulnerable, more open to attack, but he's never felt more relieved, like a great weight is finally lifted from his shoulders. He feels safe and centred and, for once, rested.

Daryl sighs, long and heavy, before turning. Bracing his weight on his arms, hands resting on either side of Beth's hips and legs wedged between hers, he leans close to his other half. His gaze is open and clear. His mouth is curled in the smallest of smiles. His muscles are relaxed, and the inner turmoil that had raged deep within his chest for years had finally eased to something lighter and more profound. Love and respect and hope courses through him, cleansing his soul of the taint of darkness, filling him with the golden wash of contentment.

"Beth Greene," Daryl says, "I love you, darlin'."

Her smile damn near breaks him. "I love you too, Daryl Dixon."


	6. Naked

**Here's the last chapter, my young ones. It's done. I'm happy with it and I hope you (yes, you sexy) are too. Please, review or check me out on Tumblr: sheriff-grimes-rhymes-dirty. You guys are hella fine. All of you.**

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><p>It isn't clear who leans forward first—exactly who initiated the final step of their first real night together—but soon the two are kissing. Daryl pushes her further onto the bed, following the line of her body until Beth's lying flat on her back and he's pressing down on top of her. Limbs entangled, hands gripping hair or shoulders or hips, they're both drowning in the feel of each other. Daryl can only revel in the feel of his bare chest pressed to Beth's, never having experienced the exquisite feel of skin-on-skin contact.<p>

And then Beth's reaching for his belt, and Daryl dips his mouth to her breasts in encouragement. She fumbles with the buckle before working it open, sliding her small, soft hand inside with a skill she had long since mastered. Daryl gasps helplessly against her skin, because when had he never been at Beth Greene's complete and utter mercy? Soon he can't possibly do anything but groan deep in the back of his throat as Beth drives him damn near insane with pleasure. In some sick form of torture, she rolls him over so she's sitting astride him, hair cascading over a shoulder. She looks like some sort of moon goddess, naked and illuminated in soft candlelight, wild with lust.

Beth leans down to kiss him again, and Daryl is quick to try and regain control of the situation. His hands run up and down the smooth expanse of her back, urging her hips to roll against him. Beth grins cruelly against his lips. "Not yet, Dixon." She teases. They kiss until their lips are bruised. They kiss until Daryl is sure he has spent more time with Beth in this one night than he had with every other woman combined. They kiss until they are lost in one another, until they are nothing but the wet, warm feel of mouth.

"Daryl?" Beth surfaces for a moment, still so close she shares the same air as him. She traces a line under his eye, smoothing the skin over the point of his cheekbone, watching as Daryl comes down from his lust-drunk high, his hair mused. His pupils are blown and his lips are once again red and kiss-swollen. Beth's draped over him, one arm hooked under his arm as to grasp purchase at his back.

"Hmm?" He hums low in his throat, rolling her over so Beth is beneath him. Nestled between her thighs, her legs instinctively wrap around Daryl's waist, pulling him close to her—

—Much to fuckin' close.

His mouth—presently at the curve of her delicate nose—jerks up at the sudden contact.

"Daryl," she says again, "I was going to ask if you have a condom."

"Uh . . ." The younger Dixon brother hadn't seen a condom in two years. How was he supposed to live another two now that he would be sleeping in a locked room with his nubile girlfriend and not be able to properly love her? In constant pain, that's how.

"Wait, just give me a sec." Beth kisses him swiftly on the lips before slipping from the bed. Daryl almost cries out at the absence of warmth and comfort she left in her wake. He watches Beth step into her ruined nightdress, smiling coyly at him as tries to rectify the damage he'd done to the front. Daryl stretches out on the bed, arm curled under the pillow, heat and desire coursing through him like liquid fire. Beth can't help but close the space—there was too much of it, in Daryl's opinion—between them and kiss his sweat-slick forehead in farewell. He reaches for her like a lost child wandering the dark alone, and she grips his hand for the briefest moment, squeezing.

"I won't be long," Beth promises, slipping out the door.

In the few minutes that Daryl is alone he toes the line of insanity, driven mad at Beth's absence. He's filled with nervous energy and arousal and love and a hundred other things. The path of Beth's fingertips and her lips had left scorch marks all over his body. Lord, he had never felt so alive, so invigorated. He was about to be with Beth in the most intimate way possible, and the fact that it was her—sunshine-hair and bright smiles and sparkling laughter—set him spiralling over the edge. For once he wasn't afraid, he was happy.

Beth returns to the room, closing the door softly behind her. Daryl's reaching for her, practically leaning over the bed, the moment she steps into the room. And Beth is crawling up on the bed next to him in a heartbeat, unable to bare the feeling of cold emptiness that was ripped open in Daryl's void.

"Here," she says between kisses to his face, fingers gripping his hair, still not close enough. "Glenn and Maggie have enough to last the second apocalypse." There's a condom in her hand, a small, square packet resting flat in her palm.

"Ya okay, darlin'?" He breathes into her ear, her baby-soft hair tickling his cheek.

"I told you I was in paradise, Mr. Dixon. And I mean it."

He smiles, his fingertips brushing an edge of the package.

"Are you okay?"

He kisses her then, because this was the single greatest moment of his life. He was fuckin' great. Over the damn moon. Their kiss soon escalates from something sweet to a more primal nature, and when his hand moulds to the curve of her hip and she gasps his name Daryl _knows_—he knows it's time. He rolls onto his back for a moment, and Beth follows him, propping her chin on his rounded shoulder. She's smiling, somewhat shyly, but when he slides the plastic home he glances at her and the world just seems right.

"Okay?"

"Yeah, okay."

Beth lies on her back. Her hands find Daryl's biceps as he braces himself above her, knees working her thighs open. It takes some manoeuvring—Beth's legs wrapping around his waist and Daryl trying to balance his weight evenly as not to crush her and four hands gripping bed sheets or skin for purchase—but soon they find a position that works for them. They're a jumble of limbs and hot breaths and small, private smiles and a million reassurances. And it's okay. It's okay because Beth has trusted Daryl from the moment he set foot on her daddy's farm. It's okay because Daryl is able to be shirtless around Beth and feel comfortable—and even liberated—in his own skin.

The road to this moment is fraught with pain and anger and denial, filled with mindsets that were hard to break and walls in need of tearing down, but they made it. Beth Greene, a girl who had once slit her wrists in the face of adversity now met it head-on, teeth bared and ready to go down with a fight. But she still sings, and manages to find beauty in the smallest, most simple things. And Daryl Dixon was no longer a creature who bore his father's abuse both internally and externally, because he had learnt to accept his scars as a part of him, and that vulnerability and kindness was a rare and wonderful thing to bestow.

Daryl shifts into position, sending Beth one last cursory look to confirm she wanted this—_him_. She nods slightly, her kiss-swollen lips pulling into a slow, face-splitting smile, and that's all the encouragement he needs. Daryl captures her mouth in a breath-stealing kiss before pushing forward, breaking the last barrier that separated them.

At first there is the sharp and insistent sting of pain and discomfort. Beth turns away, closing her eyes as to hide a tear that slips down her cheek. Daryl had never been with a virgin before, but he knew the basic logistics of it—to be honest, he thought Beth had done this before with Jimmy or Zach once. But the deed was done, and he couldn't go back now. Instead, all he could do was watch as Beth whimpered in obvious pain, biting her lip to keep from crying out. Daryl couldn't seem to do much either, he didn't dare move or speak, conflicted between the idea of pulling away from Beth or waiting until the pain subsided. Hot, red blood pumped through Daryl's veins, his heart hammering in his chest. Lord, he wanted to make it feel better for Beth but he didn't trust himself to stop once he started.

"Daryl," Beth's voice is small, pleading. "Please, move."

He nods dumbly, and starts to do as the younger Greene sister says—surprised he could even manage the action without losing control. He focuses on making slow, controlled thrusts, trying to ease into it. The rough scruff of his beard is scraping against her cheek, but Beth uses the rhythmic pull-and-push to centre herself. They're so close, practically sharing the same air, every inch of their bodies pressed to the others. Beth's legs hitch up at his waist, and the new angle nearly drives Daryl over the edge. He stills, groaning—can't help it even if he tried. Daryl stops and counts to ten before contemplating his next move, and that included nosing Beth as a cat would, eventually finding her wet, open mouth in the dim light and kissing her.

Daryl did it to distract himself—he had the tendency to shoot his load a little too early—but it soon turns into something much more needy and insistent. Beth pours everything into that kiss, her hands still holding onto the wiry strength of his upper arms, legs still around him. A fire—a low, sweet burn—has started deep in her abdomen, has gradually built into something she wants more of. Soon, Beth gasps in Daryl's mouth, for the first time in pleasure instead of discomfort. He groans in reply, swearing obscenities low against the hard line of her jaw.

Beth starts to move against him, her hips finding a pace that matches his. Their actions—initially jerky, painful and awkward—smooth into a steady rhythm, moving with a natural ease of the most carnal nature. And Daryl can't seem to think straight. He has never known sex could be like this—explosive, as it was toeing the line of insanity—and he's certainly never felt anything close to this before. The younger Dixon brother loses track of time and space, the background blurring into a monotonous landscape, dark save for Beth. For she shone with light, practically glowing with it, like some siren come to tempt him.

He's zones in on the sight of her—how a breathless gasp leaves the O of her perfect lips, how her eyes close and crinkle as a tremor rolls through her, how the halo of her sunshine-bright hair is framed against the pillow. And Beth's body is alight with fire, desire racing through her like a freshly struck match. Her senses are in an overload of Daryl—the weight of him, the long, lean lines, the beard and shaggy hair and blue eyes. His looks—at first wounded and anxious—are now glazed over with a sort of reverence. She watches how his throat works and catches, and feels how his muscles tense and react beneath her hands and legs.

It's exhilarating, but there's an underlying current of intimacy there. It's evident when Beth's fingertips scrape a scar on Daryl's back and he doesn't flinch. It's evident when Daryl lowers his head into the cradle of her neck when he feels overwhelmed, like at any moment he could burst. It's evident when Daryl's hands abandons its desperate grip on the bed sheets to find Beth's, threading their fingers together above her head, establishing a connection that can send messages with the smallest amount of pressure.

Daryl is first—there was never any doubt that he wouldn't be. There's a groan—both loud and pained—and all the tension in his body has built up to this, to the final, blissful release—a shudder, heavy breathing, and the loss of strength he was using to hold himself up.

Beth is spurred on by the feel of him—shaking, almost whimpering, and the curve of his sweaty forehead resting against her cheek—and then she follows him into the abyss. Bloods pounding loud and ferocious in her veins as a pressure builds, crests, and then shatters within her. She holds onto Daryl, oblivious to how her nails dig into him so hard it breaks the skin. She doesn't know she's moaning—beautiful, animal noises—in his ear, her eyes squeezing shut. It's racing though her, a blinding, earth-shattering sensation that causes the background to fade and waver in comparison. The only thing that keeps her tethered to this mundane world is Daryl—the hum of satisfaction that travels from his chest to hers, the lingering press of lips to the sensitive skin behind her ear—and their hands, still clasped together.

When Beth floats back down from her euphoric high she reaches for Daryl, wrapping him tight in a hug. He's still on top of her, and the weight of it feels good, feels right. The smell of sweat, wood smoke, and the oil and leather of Daryl centres her frantic heartrate. The rough catch of his beard scrapes her cheek as he rises up to look at her. She's smiling—unable to stop—and is compelled to fist his hair loosely and bring his head down for one more kiss. Daryl acquiesces, allowing her to open his mouth with her tongue. It's wet and sloppy and glorious in the wonderful afterglow of sex, cementing the end to their first of many endeavours.

Daryl rolls off Beth. She moans pitifully at the loss of contact, feeling the keen absence of heat and naked, slick flesh. The younger Dixon brother disposes of the condom and fishes the red bandana from the pocket of his pants to clean him and Beth up. In the small pocket of time he was separated from Beth it feels as if he was severed, cut in half and found to be empty. He realizes that he never had a real home, and that it wasn't a Christmas tree or Sunday picnics that made one, because his home was Beth. That's where he belonged.

He crawls back to her, still not fast enough. She welcomes him, opening her arms as Daryl slips into her embrace, nuzzling into the crook of her neck. His leg, unbidden, sneaks between Beth's. Their arms find each other, limbs entangling, sweat and hot breaths of air mingling together. The two share skin contact: an action that is both so simple and intimate in nature. It's warm, quiet—peaceful.

Beth turns her head to kiss Daryl's forehead, the salt of his sweat coating her lips. One of Daryl's arm curls around her back and the other is thrown over her chest, his nose pressed to the smooth column of her neck. Her natural scent is still there—formula and flowers—but it's hidden beneath a heady layer of sweat. Daryl smiles against her skin at the oil and leather he smells on Beth, because it meant she belonged to him and him alone. And she's holding him around the neck, keeping him close to her. She can feel the rough abrasion of a scar under her forearm, and kisses him again at the thought of all the pain Daryl had to endure in his lifetime—the hurt, the loneliness, the anger.

"I love you, Daryl Dixon," she whispers.

At spending nearly his entire life never hearing those words, it's still a trial in itself to say it back—even to Beth. But, she smiles at his silence, understanding he loves her without needing to hear it. Daryl hums happily in response, the pleased sound reverberating deep in his chest. He rolls onto his side and props his head up on one hand, looking down at Beth. A crooked, lazy smirk is pulling at his lips, a cup of sunshine resting square in his chest, spreading throughout his body. Good Lord—he was happy, completely and irrevocably happy.

At the sight of him—beautiful and sweet and kind—before her, Beth is filled with the golden warmth of contentment. She kisses Daryl then, deeply. He falls back into her open arms, revelling in the comfort and security he finds there. The feel of her slim body pressing against him is damn near magical, as is the feel of her soft mouth against his and the baby-soft hair under his palm. The familiar motions of their lips and hands and legs lull Daryl and Beth into a rhythm of flesh moving against flesh. The lines of reality blur once again, the background fading into a nonsensical jumble of shape and colour.

When the two separate their lips are bruised and sore, hair rumpled, and bodies sated.

"If we kept on doin' that, Greene," Daryl comments sleepily, "I don' think we'd ever stop."

"Fine with me." Beth yawns, burrowing into the mass of tangled blankets and bed sheets. She curls into her usual sleeping position, arm tucked under a pillow. "C'mon, Mr. Dixon." She reaches for him blindly with her free hand, trying to pull him closer in the physical need of his weight and warmth. "We gotta go to sleep sometime tonight."

Daryl grips her hand tight, threading their fingers together. And, before he returns to Beth and commits to the idea of sleep, he leans over the nightstand to blow the candles out. It had burnt down to a nub, and small, weak flames were flickering in the absence of wax. The candles had borne witness to the first real night together—from separation to reunion to conflict to disclosure to the most wonderful, profound, earth-shattering apex.

Beth pulls at Daryl, grumbling at the cold space at her back where he currently should be. He grins at her greedy behaviour, and does as he was bid—like he isn't subject to her every whim. His body—lean, dirty, tanned—cocoons Beth's—slim, pale, young—until they are chest-to-chest, hip-to-hip and legs-to-legs. Daryl noses at the back of her neck, loving the girlish giggle that he elicits from Beth. Their conjoined hands settle between Beth's breasts—their nights had a habit of ending up in this exact position—but she abandons her hold on him to support her head. So Daryl's hand strays to the delicate curve of her hip, tracing absent circles on Beth's naked skin.

The night is quiet save for the low drone of crickets and other insect life. Darkness floods the room, creeping into corners and blackening edges until the two people—in bed, tangled, satisfied—are no more than silhouettes to one another. The air is thick in the usual Georgian sense, heady with the scent of sex and sweat and the tendrils of candle smoke. Daryl would've expected to be uncomfortable in a real bed with starched sheets and the roof obstructing his view of the night sky, but he's never felt better. He feels rested. Like he belonged, like he is wanted.

His fingers move on their own accord, travelling up Beth's sides and then to the sensitive strip of skin beneath her breasts and finally to the planes of her stomach. He can feel the lean muscle of her abdomen, corded with inner strength that goes unnoticed by most. But he knows that she's strong, that Beth wasn't ever weak—she was a child, she made mistakes and was scared—but it took a few weeks alone with an angry, dirty, old redneck that was too busy hating himself to notice. Beth changed—she became the person she was always supposed to be.

Only, in the process, she changed him too. His perception, his outlook on life, his general set of morals. Made him believe good people still existed, that they did survive and they could make it. Beth was a ray of sunshine in a world that rained ashes, the darkness consuming Carol and once Michonne and, eventually, Rick. And Daryl would've been claimed by the same fate if Beth hadn't breezed into his life, taking the time to make a wish on a ladybug and sing and convince him that beauty still did exist in the little things.

Beth turned back to cast him a cursory glance, a smile playing on her lips, and Daryl realizes his hand has stilled its motions on her stomach. Without thinking, he lays his palm flat on the expanse of bare skin. Right over the spot where her belly would swell with the weight on an unborn child. Again, the thought sends a spike of fear racing through him, but an undercurrent of longing, even hope, runs parallel to the feeling. There was no doubt Daryl cared for Lil' Ass Kicker, and he loved Beth so much the magnitude of such a feeling sent him reeling—he never thought you could emotion so strongly, so physically. But children?

"It's okay, Daryl," Beth says, reassuring him that she understood, that it really was okay.

Daryl lays a kiss to the underside of her wrist, over the slim line of a scar. He watches Beth squeeze her old-soul eyes shut before turning around in his embrace, facing him. And, then he repeats her actions from earlier—which feels like it had happened years ago, in another time and place—and kisses her wrist again. Then the mark on her cheek, and the one arching over her brow, and even finding the scar on her skull, hidden beneath hair and a layer of dirt.

Lord, he would never forget the moment she stumbled back into his life, with Morgan as her saviour. Although the latter had found it impossible to integrate back into a social environment and left, Beth had stayed. She—broken and scarred but still the same person—had chosen to stay, chosen to be with him, and chosen to live.

And now it was his decision—to live, with her, and whatever else swung their way.

Beth leans forward to kiss Daryl on the lips. Their foreheads resting together, she pulls back far enough for her mouth to part. She starts to sing in a high and clear voice, the familiar words lodging deep in his subconscious. A fragment of a memory—one of the first where he had looked at Beth and seen more than a dead girl, much more.

"And we'll buy beer to shotgun," she sings, caressing the side of his face and the scratch of his beard.

"And we'll lay in the lawn," his arm curls around her back, shortening the space between them.

"And we'll be good," they kiss, revelling in the simple pleasures of skin contact.

From that night forward, Daryl and Beth come to an unspoken agreement to sleep naked.


End file.
